How to Disassemble a Lenovo M910s Desktop: A Step-by-Step Guide

all righty in this particular video we are going to be disassembling our Lenovo

m910s desktop if we look at the front of this particular desktop we're going to see that it has front panel USB front

panel audio for mic and headphones as well as a power button and then we're also going to notice that there is no

DVD drive in this particular model but it does have the ability to install a DVD drive on the back side of this

computer we're also going to see that it has two thumb screws to disassemble the top panel on

this or the side panel um and then we'll also notice that this one in particular actually has something that's not

necessarily as common anymore uh which is a PS2 keyboard and mouse so not something you typically see on a lot of

the desktops anymore because it's been replaced in favor of USB devices but it does exist in this one and we are going

to have to remove it in order to disassemble the computer and remove the motherboard now in the case of the thumb

screws in a lot of uh places you're going to notice that they're probably going to be too tight to remove with

your finger the first time um however that's because when they were put on someone had actually installed them

using a screwdriver now the idea of thumb screws is just to be thumb tight so for labs and the fact that you're

going to be opening up your computer probably a lot uh it's advised that you're going to want to just thumb t

these that way you can open it later on and you're not going to have to worry about it too

much now off camera I've actually gone ahead and powered this computer on and verified that it works however it's

advised to you to make sure that it does function uh before disassembly especially if you're told that it works

only for the fact that in sometimes in Transportation uh computers can have issues um and it's always important to

know what your starting ground is if the computer's working if it's not working you want to know that

so in this case I've actually turned this computer on off camera and I've gone ahead afterwards and unplugged all

of the cables whenever we're working inside of the desktop we want to make sure we're unplugging everything not

just the power especially if we're disassembling things unplug everything that way there's no chance of power

being fed into it in any way on the front side of this computer after we've unplugged it from Power

you're going to want to hold the power button down for about 5 to 10 seconds to ensure that there's no resid ual power

left in the power supply in some computers you'll actually notice there's an LED indicator on the motherboard uh

and that indicator will be used to drain the power down over time now to disassemble this PC we are going to need

a tool kit in this particular case this toolkit is just an 11 piece startech toolkit nothing fancy really all we need

and desire is just a simple philp screwdriver head and we also have our anti-static

wrist strap now to use our antistatic wrist strap it's actually fairly simple all we need to do is just go ahead and

uncp or clip the snap in if it's not there and you want to adjust it so we snap that on and then it's just an

elastic band that actually goes over your wrist like so and then on the other end you have an alligator clip that you

can clip onto any piece of unpainted surface so after we take the side panel off we can go ahead and clip it onto

this back ledge here or even possibly onto this little ring there on the back back Edge and that allows us to work

safely inside the machine and that ensures that any static potential between us and the desktop has been

removed we're going to become common with the desktop so to open this up we're going to go ahead first and get

our Phillips screwdriver so we're going to use one of the larger Phillips

screwdrivers which you can see here just to pop these two screws off the nice thing about these is you just need to

loosen them a little bit and then the rest can be done with your hand now this this one's actually pretty tight there

we go so we've gone ahead and we've loosened those so now we can use our fingers just to remove them and we're

going to go ahead and put these off to the side now in this particular toolkit I have I actually have a little

Nifty bottle to put my screws into so we can go ahead and we can put our two thumb screws in there there's nothing

special about them they're going to be fairly easy to identify later on and we're going to slide the back of this

case this way so sliding that off removing the panel and putting it off to the

side now in this particular case uh you're going to notice when you look in here some different points that are with

red you're going to notice little iconography that's printed onto the actual metal or stamped into it and in

this particular case it looks like we need to press this forward and this needs to flip up now before we can

actually do that in this particular small form factor we actually have to pull the front panel off off so before I

continue any further I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to clip onto the back using my anti-static bracelet now I

think right there is probably going to be the best place for now so to pop the front panel off simply

just pulling on those three tabs You see there with the red markings and it actually just

rotates towards the front of the case so it rotates off and flips off and we can put that off to the side now so now that

we have that off to the side we can go ahead and continue let me just zoom out a little bit

perfect so now that we continue we can actually press this little red in and give it a little push sometimes you got

to push the way you don't want it to go so in this case I'm pushing a little bit to close it just so I can press on this

latch and release it from the case and then the whole front of this case actually spins

out there we go so the whole front of this case spins out now so now I have access inside the case to the power

supply the CPU Cooler we got the motherboard the hard drive is going to be in the front we got a whole bunch of

different Power connectors throughout the case and I think the uh the first thing that's important is obviously

removing the stuff that we easily can get access to and removing the connectors off the motherboard uh

because the motherboard and the power supply are probably going to be near the end most

likely so removing the little shroud around the CPU Cooler will make it a little bit easier to work with and now

in this particular case it's not always the case but in this particular one we actually have a few zip ties now I took

the uh the liberty of sort of doing a quick examination first uh but you are going to need either need a pair of wire

cutters or you're going to have to borrow a pair of wire cutters and you're going to need to cut very carefully

without cutting the wires of course the zip tie on the front of the case that's holding in those

and then the other zip tie is actually over on the side and uh actually it's right here so this other zip tie is on

the power wires and it's zip tiing a bunch of the other connectors to it so similarly very carefully we're just

going to clip that second zip tie off the power wires so now that that's done put those wire cutters off to the side

because we're not going to need them anymore so now we got our cooler visible we got our PS2 keyboard and mouse

visible um and then we got some other connectors so first things first I think we should go ahead and remove the hard

drive so the hard drive is removed simply by just pressing on this little red lever sliding it towards the back of

the case and pulling the hard drive out very carefully you're going to want to grip onto the power connector for STA

and the data connector for STA and you're going to want to remove that so generally I hold on to it and then I'm

actually pressing with my thumb against the side of the hard drive to pull it off straight stra we don't want to be

wiggling it from um the from the top to the bottom of the drive we want to be just pulling it off of the end that way

we're not going to damage the SATA connections because if those crack they are going to break and they're no longer

going to be usable so now that we removed our SATA data and our sta power from our computer we can go ahead and we

can work on something a little bit more now so in this case here we're going to remove our SATA power cord by simply

gripping the bottom of the connector with our thumb and index finger squeezing and pulling upwards and we're

going to sit that cable off to the side we're going to perform the same action again with our SATA data cable we're

going to take a quick observation to see where it's plugged into uh in this case here looking at the silk screen it shows

that it's plugged into SATA one we're going to grip the connector same way there's going to be metal on one side

pressing that and pulling straight up there should be no resistance there and that's removed

now next up we're going to go go ahead and we're going to remove some of the other cables so in this case here we got

our speaker connector so the mono speaker which is just hanging up on the front its cable comes over here to the

far right of the front of the case grabbing the connector pulling straight up it should be fairly easy to

disconnect on the right hand side there's a little wire clip we can press that downward or upwards depending on

how the style is in this case here it looks like it's one way or the other way and it pops up there we

go and then on the front here we have our power button and our LED indicator which are hanging out right here they

just plug into the motherboard right in front of it so that's a fairly easy connector same thing grabbing it as

close as we can to the connector these sometimes you got to give a little bit of a wiggle side to side just to loosen

the connection but it does disconnect fairly easily next up we're going to disconnect

our thermal sensor from the front of the computer and we're going to disconnect our think center

LED for some reason this computer has a think center LED into the logo and you can see that if you actually look at the

front panel right here this little uh indicator light is what lights up when

the computer poers on so we're going to go ahead same thing as before we're going to grab the green connector uh

which is our thermal sensor pulling straight up and then we're going to grab the indicator LED and pull straight up

those as well or should be uh fairly easy to remove so now that all we have left in our case is our PS2 connector in

the back so same thing let me just zoom the camera out a little bit it's hanging out all the way back here next to the

back of the computer case same thing this one's fairly easy just lifting slowly straight up and that makes

for that and then next up up we have our Ram we can remove and we have our two power connectors so actually let's get

our power connectors out of the way first so what we can do is we can go ahead and we can remove our four pin CPU

auxiliary power connector now it is clipped to the side of the case so we're going to have to press that little clip

a little bit just to disconnect that and we're going to pull that off to the side same thing as well we have our

motherboard power connector now this particular power supply we're going to learn about later on in the semester uh

is an ATX 12volt power connector so it's not your typical 20 24 pin power connector but it gets removed the same

way we press on the clip on the one side now this one typically tends to need a little bit more Force so jiggling it

side toide while you're pressing and pulling at the same time is usually enough to get that to remove itself so

now that that's all said and done we're going to go ahead and remove the ram ram in this particular case you're going to

press the releasing arms on the left and right hand side and when you do so the ram will make a audible sort of clicking

sound as it comes up and then you should be able to remove it with both fingers very carefully from the outside now when

you're removing the ram you want to try to avoid touching any of the contacts on the edge just because that is going to

possibly cause damage to the computer over time so we're going to put the Ram off

to the side now so now that's all that's left is our CPU Cooler um the CPU Cooler connector and

our power supply now we're going to remove the uh four pin from that and part of the reason why I've actually

left the cooler on at this particular Point uh is mainly for the fact that there is thermal paste on the uh bottom

of it and there is some on the top of it you can remove the CPU Cooler earlier if you like it's just important that you

make sure you clean it first uh before you continue that way you don't have wires that are going to fall into the

thermal paste and make a bit of a mess everywhere now in this particular case I'm going to remove the power supply

next now the power supply is fairly easy on the back of the computer case we have three Phillips screws they are case

style screws and we can actually use that exact same screwdriver we previously used to remove the thumb

screws so just making quick wind of all three of those

okay perfect so now we've removed those three screws now one thing you're going to

want to note um and there will be a picture online that there is a difference between the threads so make

sure that you do pay attention that these threads are very coarse and they are case screws because once we start

removing the motherboard screws you're going to notice that those look very similar so now that we've disconnected

the screws from the back of the power supply we can go ahead inside the computer case there's actually a little

tiny latch that we press on and as we press on it we're going to very carefully pull the power supply or push

the power supply from the back into the case now you're going to want to be careful because as you're pressing if

you push too hard you're actually going to pinch your finger underneath that clip so now that the power supply is

removed we can go ahead and put that off to the side and that leaves us with two things

really our cooler that needs to be removed the motherboard that needs to removed and actually there's a few other

little smaller things which we can deal with afterwards like the speaker in the front of the case that needs to be

removed and thermal sensor um but the motherboard's going to be a little bit more work and also we

got to remove our PS2 connector from the back so I think what we should do next is actually we're going to remove that

and we're going to remove the speaker that way the last few things we're working on uh we don't have to worry

about the motherboard being disconnected or things having the ability to be moved around so on the back of the computer

case as I mentioned before these are just simply two Phillips screws exact same screwdriver we

previously were able to use it's the exact same one that can be used again now that's the really nice

thing about this particular model is that every one of these screws accepts a fairly stubby Phillips

screwdriver you don't need to have anything pointy or anything fancy and just like that we've gone ahead and

we've removed our PS2 connector so we can go ahead and put that off to the side

now now in this particular case I think I said we're going to remove the speaker next so turning the computer on its

side coming back to the front if we look at the front we can actually see and we might might even have to close it a

little bit to see being careful not to pinch the wires because that's a good way to break

them when we come to the front you're going to actually notice that the speaker has a little clip that you just

press and it pops out and the exact same thing with the thermal sensor you just press the clip and it also pops out and

you'll notice it even fell into the computer case that's how light the pressures required in order to take

those two things out so thermal sensor is now removed off to the side and our speaker is also removed and we're going

to put that off to the side now other than that the only other thing that may get in the

way is our power button similarly our power button on the front here if we close this being careful of our fingers

now our power button on the front is very similar it's flush but it's kind of right above the motherboard so it might

get in the way now we also see as well looking at the front area there's actually another filp screw up front so

this whole front section can actually come unscrewed and the cool thing about it is this is also a case

screw and simply removing it again is going to work wonders and this slides to the left like that and you're going to

notice it kind of has a bit of a hinge way and look at that our power button and the front panel protection for the

USB and the front panel audio has now been easily removed now those other screws I left off to the

side but we should definitely go ahead and put them away so we're putting away that front case

screw and we're going to put away those two back screws for the PS2 connection now another Nifty way of holding on to

these screws would be something like this it's like a little pill container you can actually hold your screws in it

fairly easily and you can buy them pretty much everywhere and it helps keep them

separated and organized okay okay so now that we've done that there's really not much left

in this computer case other than the cooler the motherboard and that little indicator LED now unfortunately that

little indicator LED I never did actually find an easy enough way to remove it without the possibility of

damaging so we're going to go ahead and leave that in there but our cooler now we can go ahead and remove simply by

performing a star technique so little bit of this screw little bit of this screw little bit of this screw little

bit of this screw and then basically cycling around that over and over and over again until it becomes loose and

comes off now the reason why we're performing this technique is because we actually want the entire cooler to come

off of the board evenly we don't want it to rock on the CPU and we don't want it to put

undue stress on certain screw points because that can cause damage and looks like actually I'm almost done

there's just a couple little ones left and when you try to lift it up a little bit you'll notice it gets hung

and if it does just take the rest of the screws off so on the bottom of our CPU Cooler you're going to notice that

there's actually some thermal paste we're going to very carefully put this upside down off to the

side now before we remove our CPU a lot of you are going to want to jump into that I would suggest removing the

motherboard first and the reason being is because if we remove the CPU we're going to want to clean it you're going

to have an open socket we still got to remove screws so it's important that the CPU is the last step that we can perform

so let's go ahead and remove all of the screws from the motherboard and there's a lot of

screws we got one over to the right of the m.2 we got one next to the SATA connection we got two in the front next

to the USB we got a couple hanging out at the back and we got some hanging out underneath the clips for the ram slot

now it's always important when you are removing these motherboard screws that you do keep them at least mentally noted

what they look like because the threads on these are a lot thinner and they're not the same as the case

screws and the other thing as well to note is that sometimes these motherboard screws do have a tendency to hide in

places you don't expect there we go got that one so sometimes you got to pull open clips and

look very carefully because if you forget one you're not going to be able to get that motherboard out without

damaging it if at all in some cases I have seen people break the motherboards out of the case and we definitely don't

want to be doing that okay so now we've gone ahead and we' removed all the screws and in this

particular case there was 1 2 3 three four five 6 7 8 nine screws we're going to go ahead and put

those aside and when we put those back in you're going to also want to make a mental note of where they were because

you're also going to have your CPU Cooler that's going to be screwed in using four of these screw holes so

you're not going to want to put them in the wrong spots so now that we've removed all of the screws we got our

case completely emptied the next thing we're going to want do is very carefully and I like to sometimes grab on these

little power connectors that have a little bit more beef uh you're going to grab the motherboard and it should be

fairly loose so when we grab it lift up a little bit give it a little wiggle make sure it's loose and then you're

going to slide it forward and then you're going to grab it from the back very carefully and you're

going to to slide it up and out like that so now we have an empty computer case as you can

see there is nothing inside that case and we just just have our motherboard so I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to

put that computer case off to the side and we're going to continue on now in this particular case there's really

not many places that you can safely clip off to sometimes people they'll actually clip off to the um connectors on the

back of the board if you were doing some sort of detailed repair um however in this particular case you know we're not

going to be running around and we're not going to be ating static electricity so we should be fairly uh good so first

things first we're going to remove our CPU now to remove our CPU a lot of people often times and let me just

remove my antithetic wrist strap and let's zoom in a little bit perfect a lot of times people are going

to want to just simply remove this screw and that's not the way this is done this this particular connector is what's

referred to as a zif or a zero insertion Force so simply holding on to the the uh socket a little bit we're just going to

remove this arm by pressing it to the right lifting it up spinning it around and then it flops open like

that and when we go to grab it on the top and the bottom here you're actually going to notice that there's a little

bit of a finger hole so we can simply grab it between our thumb and our index finger and if you have nails it's a

little bit easier but you're going to grab it you're going to lift straight up and you're going to put it off to the

side now you're going to want to make sure obviously before you put a CPU back in there that there's nothing

there and we have our CPU here like so let's get that to focus there we

go so when we're looking at our CPU you'll actually notice there's some little

notches so right there there and right there and you're going to notice that gold arrow in the one side that's going

to help you realign it to put it back into the socket now in order to clean the CPU and to clean the heat sink we're

actually just going to use some isopropanol alcohol now in this case here it's in a Nifty spray bottle um but

you can actually get it in many many many different form factors um you can get it in little bottles from the

drugstore and we're going to use a little bit of paper towel and we're going to to

spray the paper towel and we're going to take it and we're going to clean it and my greatest

analogy is it's like you're helping your parents and you're cleaning pots and pans so you're going to take it and

you're going to rub in a circular pattern near the edges you're going to want to run

perpendicular and parallel to them to try to get as much of the loose stuff off as possible

and as you perform those actions you want to make sure you're not touching the bottom of the Chip And if it has a

bit of a uh gets a little bit saturated with Gunk simply just turning it around and then flipping it back works pretty

good so let me just zoom out again you can see so

simply cleaning our CPU just like some pots and pans and you might

notice that our table gets a little messy so actually we can put it that way since this is a wood table it's

non-conductive uh but next up we're going to want to clean our cooler now simply just folding our

paper towel inside out a few times if we need to we can get a little bit more alcohol to freshen that

up and we're going to take our cooler and the only part that matters is this little center part and this particular

one it's actually really nice since it's raised so same thing cleaning it just like our pots and pans giving a little

scrub scrub scrub and as you can see it's all nice and clean now it's not going to look

perfect it's going to make look a little bit tarnished and that's all right and then with our paper towel at the very

end we're going to want to make sure we clean up our desk area that way we're not transferring thermal paste

everywhere and if we did happen to get any on our hands you're going to want to make sure you just clean that up it's

not something that's going to harm you immediately uh but it's definitely not something that you want to

ingest all right so just like that we have disassembled our desktop computer now in the the class you're going to

want to go ahead and call over your professor before you go ahead and insert the CPU back into the socket and the

main reason for that is to make sure that you are doing it correctly and that nothing is going to be damaged but just

to kind of give you the rundown of how this is going to work when you hold on to your CPU just like when you removed

it you're going to want to make sure your board is orientated the correct way when you're looking at the actual socket

itself you're going to notice there's a little uh arrow on it that you can actually orientate as well and that

little arrow aligns with with the arrow on the CPU so you grab

it you're going to put it down like that simple as that you're going to grab the socket you're going to flip the bottom

portion down first so that way it hooks underneath the screw and you're going to press it

down like so so now our CPU is secured in the socket it's really important that before

you put the socket down that you ensure the CPU is correctly installed incorrectly inserting the CPU is going

to possibly and most likely cause irreversible damage to the socket or to the CPU

itself so now that that's done our CPU has been inserted in front of the professor we're going to go ahead and

put our motherboard back into our case and if for some reason your bracket came off the back of the motherboard you're

going to want to make sure that this bracket which is used to secure the cooler onto the motherboard is

reinstalled back in the same place so bringing back our computer case zooming back

out so bringing back our computer case the exact same way we put it in we're going to slide our front panel in first

and then we're going to sit it down