E6500 and M4400 Motherboard swap

Greetings!

I have just received a refurb E6500 from the Dell outlet and felt as if it wouldn't be powerful enough for engineering (found an M4400 on the outlet a day after I bought the E6500 that would have fit my budget ). So after reading some reviews and looking at some pictures I have decided to do a motherboard swap with an M4400 (and if everything works out make $60 from it all too!)

So here are a couple things....

1. Can anyone either recommend or dissuade removing the thermal pads and replacing with AS5?
2. Should this not work out, instead of putting the item on Ebay again, would anyone like this motherboard for $175 + Shipping. I know I can get higher on ebay but I would rather ask the community first. (Goodbytes knows me over at Bit-Tech as C-Sniper so I am not a total stranger here)

Other than that lets do this!

 

As far as I know the thermalpad covers only a chipset, at least as far as an E6500 is concerned. I have replaced standard thermal grease with AS5. Temperatures are a bit lower (~3°C) during idle. AS5 is applied only about 30 hours ago.The difference should be bigger when heated properly. I can't compare stress - haven't tested when the standard grease was applied. Consider buying Noctua NT-H1 or MX-2 instead of AS5.

 

Hey, keep us updated, sounds like a good project.

I was actually interested in this myself, as the video card is rather lackluster in the E6500 compared to the M4400.

However, I was deterred by the sheer price of the M4400's motherboard.
Let us know how it goes!

 

I would not recommend removing the thermal pads. The gap is probably more than a millimeter or two, and grease is not effective (tried it on my D620, temps increased by several degrees).

 

I have no idea what I am going to say, but, if there is a one or two mm gap, put a penny with AS5 on both sides might work. Again, I am really not sure b/c I don't have E6500 or M4400.

 

this is a bad idea, it would be quite insulating. if you want to remove the thermal pads, you'll have to replace them with copper shims of exact thickness. more trouble than its worth really.

but replacing the stock thermal paste is definitely a good idea. i used gelid extreme on mine and immediately saw temps drop by almost 10*c