How to Disassemble a Lenovo M910s Desktop: A Step-by-Step Guide
Heads up!
This summary and transcript were automatically generated using AI with the Free YouTube Transcript Summary Tool by LunaNotes.
Generate a summary for freeIf you found this summary useful, consider buying us a coffee. It would help us a lot!
Introduction
Disassembling a desktop can seem daunting, but with the right guide, it can be a manageable task. In this article, we will walk you through the process of disassembling the Lenovo M910s desktop step-by-step. Whether for upgrading components, performing maintenance, or troubleshooting, understanding how to disassemble your PC safely is crucial. We will cover all necessary tools, safety precautions, and provide detailed steps to ensure you can tackle this task with confidence.
Overview of the Lenovo M910s
The Lenovo M910s is a compact desktop computer that packs a lot of power in a small form factor. It features front panel USB and audio ports, but notably, lacks a DVD drive, though it has an option for installation. This model also includes a PS2 keyboard and mouse connection, which is becoming less common as USB devices dominate the market. Let's get started with the disassembly process.
Tools Required
Before starting, gather the following tools:
- Screwdriver Set: A Phillips screwdriver is essential for removing screws.
- Anti-static Wrist Strap: This will help prevent damage to components from static electricity.
- Wire Cutters: If zip ties are present, you might need wire cutters to remove them safely.
- Container for Screws: A small container to keep screws organized during the process.
Step-by-Step Disassembly Guide
Step 1: Preparing Your Workspace
- Power Off: Ensure the Lenovo M910s is powered off and unplugged from the electrical outlet.
- Remove Cables: Disconnect all peripherals and cables connected to your desktop.
- Press Power Button: Hold down the power button for 5-10 seconds to discharge any residual power.
Step 2: Open the Desktop Case
- Remove Side Panel: Locate the two thumb screws on the back of the M910s and loosen them with your fingers (if they are too tight, use a screwdriver).
- Slide Off Panel: Once the screws are loosened, slide the side panel from the back to the front and set it aside.
Step 3: Connecting Anti-Static Strap
- Wear the Anti-static Strap: Secure the strap to your wrist and clip the other end to a metal part of the chassis. This ensures you are grounded and minimizes static build-up when handling sensitive components.
Step 4: Accessing Internal Components
- Remove Front Panel: Gently pull the front panel off by pressing on the indicated tabs. Set the front panel aside to access internal components.
- Identify Components: You will notice the motherboard, power supply, RAM, hard drive, and CPU cooler.
Step 5: Removing Components
-
Disconnect Wires: Carefully remove all cables connected to the motherboard and components. Pay attention to the SATA power and data cables from the hard drive, and the sixteen-pin motherboard power connector.
-
Remove Hard Drive: Locate the red lever and slide it to disconnect the hard drive. Pull it out carefully, making sure to handle cables gently to avoid damage.
-
Remove RAM: Unlock the RAM by pressing down on the release arms at either end and pulling the RAM sticks straight out.
-
Cooler and CPU: Gently remove the CPU cooler using a star pattern to unscrew evenly, then lift it off. Follow this with the CPU by releasing the ZIF connector, lifting it out carefully.
-
Remove Motherboard: Finally, unscrew all screws securing the motherboard and slide it out gently to avoid damaging any connectors.
Safety Precautions
- Always ensure that the desktop is powered off and unplugged during disassembly.
- Use the anti-static strap each time you handle internal components.
- Keep screws organized and ensure you remember which screw goes where.
Conclusion
Disassembling your Lenovo M910s desktop doesn’t need to be an intimidating experience. By following this comprehensive step-by-step guide, you can safely disassemble your PC for maintenance, upgrades, or repairs. Remember to proceed with caution, respect the components, and ensure you handle everything carefully to avoid damaging any part of your system. Happy dismantling!
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
you put the socket down that you ensure the CPU is correctly installed incorrectly inserting the CPU is going
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
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