7. Removing the heatsink: The heatsink is attached to the fan by very delicate strips of foam. The guide says to roll a pointy spudger back and forth to separate the foam from the fan. I didn't have one so I used a little screwdriver (very carefully)

8. The heatsink is removed!

9. There's some blue paste residue on the CPU and rear side of the heatsink which is cleaned off. Fresh paste will be applied on reassembly.

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3. removed the SD card reader no problem.

4. The iFixit instructions say to remove a piece of foam near the fan exhaust, but my day one Switch didn't have it! Must only be included in later batches.

5. The heat shield comes off and we can finally see a naked Switch! Woo! Note the messy, dried pink thermal paste on the heat sink.

6. VERY carefully disconnected the battery connector with a spudger and plectrum without also removing the black socket.

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2. Luckily, I was planning on replacing the back plate anyway due to cracks near two of the screws (a common but not officially acknowledged manufacturing fault), so I wasn't bothered about keeping it intact.

With one screw already out, I prised the plate off around the cracked corners and was able to remove the remaining plastic and the now exposed screws with pliers.

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1. The first part was by far the most challenging! Removing the tri-point screws from the back plate.

I mistakenly used the wrong driver and got one screw out but the rest got *slightly* stripped. 😬

After I tried again with a cheap eBay driver, they were too far gone. I tried some internet-sourced tricks to remove them but to no avail. I even tried to wear the screw heads down with a drill but chickened out 😱

Image from IFixIt

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