I wanted to give you an idea of how I go about cleaning and re-applying thermal paste to an Antminer Z15.
Disassembly of the Z15 is pretty routine.
I unplugged the connections to the hash boards, as well as the connection to the control board. At that point, the power supply can be set aside.
Usually you would have to take a small screw out and pop off the top cover, but this Z15 is old and was missing the top cover when I bought it.
After that, you can remove the screws at the back of the unit, 6x that are holding the hash boards to the rear cover, and 4x that mount the rear cover to the case at each corner.
The hash boards can then be slid out of the case.
Each hashboard has 3 large heatsinks. Each heatsink has 4 screws.
I remove the four screws from each heatsink, unthreading them a bit at a time to avoid warping the hashboard.
I use cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol to take the old thermal paste off of both faces – the back of the heatsink and the top of the chip.
I re-apply thermal paste, then set the heatsink back in its spot.
When I torque the screws, I do that by hand a bit at a time and cross back and forth, again just trying to evenly tighten the heatsink down without warping the board.
This is tedious work, but it’s not hard.
Although I don’t show it in the video, I use the britles of a soft paintbrush to clean dust and debris out of the fins of the heatsinks.
Drop a comment below with any tips or suggestions.