Alienware 17 R4 GTX 1070 (2018) - Replacing the thermal pads with thermal paste?

I live in a country where it's hard to get special equipment, such as thermal pads. It's possible to import it, but with high costs. I've seen a tutorial on repasting the AW17R4 (no idea where, I forgot sorry) where the guy also replaced some thermal pads with Arctic Silver 5. I wouldn't use conductive paste myself, but I happen to have 11 grams of TG Kryonaut lying around, so I was wondering if it would be possible to use that?

Right now, my 1070 keeps cold around 70 degrees where my i7-7820HK is throttling around 92 degrees, with an average core difference of 15 degrees, so I really want to do something about it.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...u-core-temperature-differential-issue.805062/

Hmm. It looks like I've got an older heatsink as well. Should/Could I request a new one from Dell?

 

If your keen to play the lottery sure, otherwise I dont know if its worth the trouble.

If your temp differential is 15C then your contact isnt flat. Consider lapping.

 

I figured about the contact. What do you mean by lapping?

 

sanding down the surface so its more uniformly flat across the contact plate.

 

Wouldn't that make the contact worse? I've asked around about sanding down my PC heatsink to clean oxide off the surface, and people told me that it was the worst possible idea.

Also, I doubt they'll send me a new one if I modify the old one. No way to prove it's their fault then.

 

I'd say instead of thermal paste, try to look at K5 Pro. For the application where thermal paste is too thin and thermal pads are too thick, K5 pro provides a balance.

This isn't a thermal paste substitute btw.





I'd say try to get a service or replacement first. Saying that one or both of your fans are broken / have bad bearings / making really bad noise is a good way to get a replacement from the stubborn Dell.

 

There doesnt really seem to be a consensus on the newer ones being better as people are still having issues. You can try it, especially if its to no cost to you but I havent seen a unilateral improvement. My ear isnt to the ground on this issue anymore. As there is too much bickering among owners to extrapolate much.

As for lapping, that has been a strategy that has been in use for at least 13-15+ years in computers.

Your people probably think taking 40 grit sand paper is lapping, or doing it by hand instead of a known flat surface with enough density.

Far from the worst, if it didnt cost much to do for companies, it would be done on every performance machine, its labor intensive.

 

A newer heatsink should lower the core temp difference. Dont use thermal paste. Its just a not a long term soluton, pumping out, drying out etc will ruin your board. Unlike the gpu and cpu the vrms are not monitored and if you are unlucky they burn out once the thermal paste is gone.

 

Could you tell me more about this thermal paste? What are the differences between CPU cooling paste and K5? I assume it's less conductive, which would be why you shouldn't use it for you CPU, but what are the advantages?

 

Any comments on non-wearing thermal paste? For as far as I know, Arctic Silver 5 and liquid metal aren't supposed to wear out. Then again, those are conductive. AS5 might be possible though.

 

K5 is like a pudding that you put on the VRM's and other components where thermal pads where placed. Once it heats up it becomes like a custom fitted thermal pad.

This is a video of someone who installed it

 

In the end all thermal paste wears out. Especially silicone based. LM dries out when there is a too big space and AS5 also dries out over time, less than silicone based pastes but still. ICD7 might be the best for this purpose but it's still nto a good solution. Thermal paste is also not made for big gaps, it loses its effectiveness quite quickly the bigger the gap.

 

Alright, I've looked into K5, but it seems to be just about as expensive to get here as the thermal pads. Also, it doesn't seem to have very high conductivity, about half of fujipoly extreme. Would you recommend me to get thermal pads, K5 or maybe another kind of paste?

Another question, but is that much paste really necessary? Though it's gummy, it would still make quite a mess.

 

I lrefer acrtic or gelid pada because those are more squeezy for that perfect fit and i would recommend to keep those 2 thin white pads as is and dont use paste.

 

K5 is made as a thermal pad replacement, usually you put this on places where there's visible gaps, but the gaps are too thin to be filled with 0.5 thermal pad.

Works best for gaps 0.5mm or thinner.