Acer Aspire 5000 Heat Issues

I have an Acer Aspire 5000 and I was going over the Service Manual and I noticed a diagram. It says that right above the memory sockets, is the Northbridge. and the CPU is actually located close to where the cooling vent is.

I actually thought that the place where the Northbridge is (right in the center bottom of the laptop) was the CPU due to the amount of heat there. But it actually is the Northbridge. Now I can't get any temperature readings from the Northbridge but it is very hot.

In the picture, Heat Source is the location of the Northbridge and 5 is the location of the CPU:


I was wondering why does my Northbridge get so much more hotter than my CPU?

Note: I am not using a cooling pad. The Targus thing was just added for another thread.

Specs:
Acer Aspire 5000
Windows Vista
AMD Turion 64 ML-30

 

Possibly due to the fact that the north bridge doesn't have an active heat sink and relies on a passive(no fan) heat sink, and if the design of the heat sink is similar to what they used on the 3000 series then it should be aluminum which is light but not the best heat dissipater. Also the 5000 series if I remember correctly shipped with the SiS chip set which is not really known for its heat/power saving capabilities.

 

I thought since SiS shipsets are crap, especially the M760GX chipset I would have assumed it wouldn't be powerful hence less heat.

Also on the heatsink and the panel covering the northbridge, there are remnants of a compound. I assume this is thermal compound. Last year there was a reasonable amount of it, now theres only a few. It looks clear. I don't think its something like Arctic Silver 5 because those are for CPU and this is the chipset. There is also some kind of pad that it comes into contact with.

What kind of compound should I put to improve my temperatures. Also if I apply anything to it I assume it would void my warranty so I might just get Acer to reapply it.

 

If you want to keep your warranty then the heatsink fixed by acer. If they used a thermal pad then adding a compound might not be a good idea. In such a case you will have to remove the pad and modify the heatsink to make good contact with the chipset. AS5 should work fine on the chipset as well, considering it is just a thermal compound and its job is just to dissipate heat.