As I wanted to replace the thermal paste anyway, I was also able to clean the fan to remove the smelly dust.
Opening it turned out to be very easy – after all, you’re not holding a cheap Ideapad in your hand.
I still had the original 8GB RAM bar from the Dell, so I plugged it in and the system booted up without any problems.
The usual suspects such as isopropyl alcohol, cotton buds and branded kitchen roll were available for cleaning. The old thermal paste was well dried out and it took a lot of material to remove it.
I only had a new tube of Arctic MX-4 to hand to change the thermal paste.
Lo and behold, the work was worth it, the system runs subjectively quieter and also achieves significantly higher values in the benchmark. There is also no throttling, it runs.
For my tasks, preparing models with Cura, downloading 3D models or pulling them from the NAS, it is more than sufficient. It can also be used to control the plotter in the background, as the iPad app doesn’t offer all the settings.
My daughter also plays the odd indie game like Plants vs Zombies or FTL when my PC is in use. It also accompanies me on a trip from time to time, especially when you need a hard cut from work. Even if I had to do a few things myself to make it run better, it was definitely worth it.
Summary
I hope this article has taken away the fear of buying used and especially refurbished hardware. The advantage is definitely the guarantee and the fact that the dealer will take it back if it is not to your liking or is damaged. With 2 notebooks purchased by chance from the same dealer, the devices were each time in a subjectively better condition than excellent. An M-ATX case, a thin client for Proxmox and an SFF PC were also included and worked perfectly at their destinations.
You should only pay attention to relatively up-to-date hardware, in this case the 8th generation from Intel is definitely a good choice, because it supports Windows 11 and gives you a few more years of updates, andfor little more there are often new consumer devices with more performance and, if you’re lucky, a 2-year warranty.
It’s important to weigh up the pros and cons here; for frequent writers or people who often transport the device, the business device will be more worthwhile. These are often more stable and some even have a built-in mobile phone solution. For media consumption and simple games, you might be better off with a low-end Ryzen or notebook with an Intel CPU. In addition to more hardware acceleration, these often also offer a more powerful iGPU. However, the build quality often suffers, even if the marketing promisesyou a “robust case tested according to military standards“, it remains a cheap 350 euro device and not one that has already cost 1000 euros new in the basic configuration. Other features could also be missing, such as a fingerprint sensor. But it’s always worth taking a look at the devices on offer.
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