Today I’ll show you how to clean the heat sink in DELL Latitude L120. This is perhaps one of the easiest to clean laptops, and as you will see below the whole process takes less than 15 minutes. To access the heat sink you just need to remove the small plastic cover located on the underside of the laptop.

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the following procedures, turn off the laptop , unplug the power adapter and remove the battery. Note that computer parts are very sensitive to static electricity so ground yourself before touching anything inside you computer by using grounding strap or touch a metal faucet  pipe.

1. Remove the screw that secures heat sink cover to the computer body.

2. Remove four screws securing heat sink to the system board.

3. Now carefully lift the heat sink up. As you can see from the picture, the heat sink is clogged with dust which reduces the cooling effect of the air flow passing through it.

4. I recommend you to apply new thermal paste on the CPU before installing the heat sink back, but first you will need to clean both (the CPU and heat sink) surfaces well. You can remove the remains of the old thermal paste using cotton swab moistened with alcohol-based solvent.