The unit I use is a NetGear R6300. It’s been running without a reboot for a long time and it’s been pretty stable, but… It runs hot as hell! So I started thinking about how to cool it down, and just as I was about to search, a coworker next to me said there are ready-made kits online. Sure enough, a search on eBay turned some up… and they were cheap, so I went and bought one.

A while back I repasted the X250 and strapped on an external cooler, but it still wasn’t enough. The main problem: temps still blow up when it’s docked. Three reasons: Broadwell runs hot as hell to begin with The X250 has a single heat pipe, so the cooling is dogshit The X240/X250 dock is badly designed and doesn’t account for thermals at all Anyway, temps are exploding and I need to fix it, so I’ve got a few angles to attack from.

Recently I hooked my ThinkPad up to a dock and ran dual monitors, and the thing kept spiking to 90°C at the drop of a hat. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I decided to do something about it. The mod went two ways: repaste the thermal compound, and add external cooling.