Lenovo Thinkpad T520 Disassembly (Clean Cooling Fan, Remove Keyboard)

In this guide, I will explain how to disassemble the Lenovo ThinkPad T520 to remove the DVD drive, RAM, keyboard, palm rest, heat sink, and cooling fan.

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Unlock and remove the battery.
Remove all screws from the bottom case.

Lift and remove the memory cover; underneath the memory cover, you will find a screw next to a keyboard symbol indicating that it is used to secure the keyboard. Remove this screw.

Remove the hard drive cover.

Remove the hard drive.

Remove the screw in the hard drive bay.

Unlock and remove the DVD drive.

Flip and open the laptop, lift the keyboard, and place it on the palm rest, then disconnect the keyboard ribbon cable.

In the next step, I will remove the palm rest.

Begin to separate the palm rest. You can pry the palm rest with a pry bar.

Continuing to pry up the palm rest

Lift up the palm rest and disconnect the touchpad cable.

Remove the two screws securing the speaker and remove the speaker.
Remove the six screws securing the heat sink.

Remove the heat sink and cooling fan.

You can now use a dusting ball or brush to clean the dust off your fan and heat sink.

Before reinstalling the fan, you need to remove the old thermal grease from the processor and the graphics card with a cloth and apply new thermal grease.