Vaio FZ unscrewed:
A while back i promised some of you i'd post some pictures of the inside of my FZ11S, and that moment is finally here.
I'm used to cleaning out my notebooks every 6 months or so since i use it in reasonably dusty environments, and because i share my apartment with a hairy cat. But since the FZ doesn't have a separate lid that covers the fan area that means the whole bottom has to come off first. Since i couldn't find a manual or any other documentation on how to open up this particular Vaio i had to find out myself how to do it, and i thought it could be helpful to do a little how-to-tutorial instead of just a simple photo shoot.
First of all; when you need to open up your FZ make sure you have enough room to work with and a clean environment to work in. Keep in mind that some parts can be really delicate so don't use to much force. The FZ is put together really well and is very easy to take apart an put back together again, so if you have to use force you're probably doing something wrong anyway. I take no responsibility whatsoever if you brake anything, and chances are that you will loose your warranty when you open up your Vaio (although i managed to put mine back together again without a scratch, and i don't think that there's anyway to see that it's been opened). It's also advisable to discharge yourself from static electricity to prevent damaging the sensitive electronics. You have special risk bands for that, but i just touch the pipes of my well grounded central heating system from time to time and make sure i don't wear any synthetics. All the tools you need are a screwdriver and a creditcard, and for cleaning an old toothbrush and a vacuum cleaner or a can of compressed air.
Getting started:
-Unplug your notebook and place it upside down on a towel or piece of cloth to avoid scratches on the lid, i also recommend placing the keyboard cover that came with the notebook (the thin sheet of Styrofoam) between the lid and the keyboard. Take out the battery, and remove the two lids that cover the hard drive and the memory banks. Now you can remove the hard drive by unscrewing the three screws that hold the bracket in place, after that you can slide it to the left and take it out. The memory can be left in place during this whole procedure.
-Now unscrew and remove the optical drive; it's held in place by the two screws that are right underneath the drive, take them out and just slide out the entire drive. If it doesn't slide out real easy just press with a creditcard or screwdriver on the aluminum strip you see shining between the notebook casing and the drive to release it. After the drive is removed you can unscrew the rest of the screws at the bottom of the notebook, don't forget the four screws besides the battery connector (not to be mistaken with the ac power-plug) and the two larger screws that were underneath the battery, they hold the speaker cover from the inside. Collect all the screws, you're gonna need 'm again and you wouldn't want to loose one of them to find it got stuck somewhere inside the notebook and cause a short circuit later.
-Then comes the trickiest part; turn the notebook back on it's feet again and open the screen as far as it will go, the back lid is almost loose but you have to unscrew the screen hinges to because the screws that hold them in place are screwed directly into the back lid. To access them you need to remove the lid that covers the speakers first. It's only clicked in place since you've already removed the two screws earlier, so you can just pry it off carefully. Be careful with this, i again used a creditcard myself to create some room to get my fingers underneath it. A screwdriver will surely leave some nasty marks, and you don't really have to use that much force to get it off. Don't worry about losing the media buttons, they are fixed to the speaker cover and wont come off.
When you've got the speaker cover off you can see the hinges that are held in place by 3 screws each, you might have to move around a few wires before you can acces them. The first thing i noticed was that there was a lot of dust collected around the left hinge, not that strange since the fan is placed closely to it but still a bit funny. Now is the time to be really careful, after you've taken out those 6 screws the screen is only held in place by it's wiring, try to put as little stress on them as possible. That can be a little hard because you have to turn the whole thing around again while you keep it all in place at the same time, it can be helpful to have some assistance at this point but it's do-able by yourself. Before you turn it around make sure you have a good surface to put it on in the funny shape it has now, i used a soft pillow for this myself as you might be able to see in the pictures below.
Now you're done, you can simply lift off the back cover and see the little electronic wonders inside.
Cleaning:
To clean it up just check for dust, most of it will sit on and around the fan and you'll find a nice blanket between the fan and top heatpipe. If you find a lot of though-to-remove hairs around the fan -or find it necessary for any other reason- you could also unscrew the four screws that hold the fan casing in place to remove the fan and it's casing for better access.
Carefully pry and brush out all dust and dirt with the toothbrush and suck it up with the vacuum cleaner. I use a small hand size vacumer for that, it has a detachable rubber mouth (thats originally designed to suck up spilled fluids) that won't damage any components. Of course if you have a can of compressed air you can also use it to blow the dust out.
I took the pictures before i cleaned up the machine, so you can see how much -or little- dust it has collected within six months of heavy use. I did remove the dust i mentioned around the left-hinge before taking the pictures because i couldn't undo the screws otherwise.
Overall i'm quite pleased to see that it doesn't collect that much dust and that it is as easy to clean and work on, the FZ seems like a very well thought out and smartly put together piece of technology. Once you know how to you can take it apart and put it back together in ten minutes or so. Cleaning out the dust does help to keep the notebook quit(er) btw, the fan runs smooth again and it also doesn't turn on as much as it did and for a shorter period of time.
There were also a lot of questions about the fan or fan's, now we can see it has just one fan to cool both the CPU and GPU heat sink, just like it's predecessor the FE. Unlike the FE it does seem both heat sinks can be removed, they are both held in place with screws while the GPU heat sink of the FE was soldered on. I haven't tried it but i will next time i open it up and add some pictures of the CPU and GPU as well. Might take me while before i get to it though!
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