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m18x - Teardown Guide (Quick and Dirty Edition)


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OK, people have been asking for this for a while so I thought since I can tear this down in about 10min, I should do a quick write-up.

Like the title said, I did this quick so pictures wont be the best but you will get a better understanding on how to teardown the system enough to at least repaste etc..

Here we go

1 - Shot of the underside

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2 - Remove battery and the 4 screws in red to remove bottom cover

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3 - Bottom Cover Off: Remove Screws Labeled I (5 of them in Red), P ( 5 in Blue), and HD Bay screws (4 in Green)

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4 - Remove Hard Drives

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5 - Remove Screws In Empty Hard Drive Bay (4 in blue)

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6 - Remove the LCD Hinge Screws ( 4 in Red) and disconnect the wireless antennae (circled and traced in Red)

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7 - Flip System over and open screen

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8 - Pop off the media control panel by lifting the back right and left corners until it "pops" off.

I find using my guitar pick helps with this

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9 - Once the back corners have popped loose, run the guitar pick around the edges to loosen the rest (around the keyboard)

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10 - Picture of the media panel loose but still connected with the ribbon cable (disconnect this now)

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11 - Remove the Keyboard and macro keyboard screws ( 6 in Red)

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12 - Disconnect all cables from the motherboard and graphic cards ( 11 in total) and 2 more lcd screws ( 2 in blue)

This includes:

2 ribbon cables for the macro keyboard

2 ribbon cables for the keyboard

3 for the handrest/trackpad (2 on bottom, 1 near the right crossfire cable connector)

2 for the screen (one toward the bottom left, one at the top left)

2 for the crossfire cable (labeled L and R on the cable)

post-32-14494988372388_thumb.jpg

13 - Remove 3 more screws securing the cover ( 3 in Red).

You will need to pop off this cover starting at the back... just lift until it pops off.

If it is being difficult, make sure all screws labeled "P" on both the top and bottom are removed.

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14 - Once the cover is off, remove the screws (going from #1-4) on your heatsinks.... clean and repaste.

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If anyone wants pics of the heatsinks removed just let me know (I took a couple but not really necessary for this guide).

Once again, I did this all very fast so I know it is not as polished as it could have been.... but I wanted this out sooner than later for everyone to use.

Let me know if anything is unclear etc...

D.

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Glad people are liking the write-up.

Thinking I might do the same for my Elitebook 8540w if I decide to pop my 920xm OEM into it (since nobody seems to want to buy it) even if it is 10w higher than the system heatsink is supposed to handle (what with the quadro 1800m in it).

Heck, maybe I will buy a secondary heatsink from hp and mod it up..... hmmmmm possibilities:29_002:

D.

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Couldn't help myself... went ahead and ordered a spare heatsink for my 8540w.

SO, will mod it up and do a teardown guide for my 8540w in the coming weeks.

D.

Nice looking forward to it.

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Guest sev7en

Hi!

thanks for the quick guide! I have to replace the keyboard and the question is... can I start from step 8 directly or I have to remove the back screws too?

Cheers,

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Hi!

thanks for the quick guide! I have to replace the keyboard and the question is... can I start from step 8 directly or I have to remove the back screws too?

Cheers,

You need to do these steps..

1,2, The red screws in 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Hope this helps

D.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

So I've done the teardown, everything bar the SSD is in and repasted.

When I try to boot I get a black screen and two loud beeps (repeated). Quick search tells me this is likely memory related, Is it because I tried to be smart and put the ram in the slots under the keyboard to make future upgrades easier? Or have I killed my new 1866mhz ram? :(

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Ram should be fine.. .but you need to use the ram slots on the bottom of the laptop first (dimm slots 1 and 2)

The slots under the keyboard (dimm slots 3 & 4) are for expanding to more than 2 sticks of ram.

SO, either pull it apart and put the ram back into slots 1&2 (bottom of the system) or buy 2 more sticks of the same ram and put those into dimm slots 1&2 and have more fun :P

D.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 5 months later...

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