Thermal pads for aspire 7720G

Hi! I have Aspire 7720G. After cleaning heat-sinks several times, i noticed that thermal pads have started to deteriorate. I have no experience with thermal pads, so I am asking you, people here, for help.

There are several types of thermal pads inside the laptop. Some are white and look like chewing gum, others are blue. Some look like sponge. And they come in various thicknesses. The blue ones, as far as I can see, are on northbridge and on ram chips on graphics card. The chewing gum type are on what looks to me like power components and there is one thick sponge looking under the keyboard.


So I am asking you what types of thermal pad should I look for, who are good thermal pad manufacturers, what should I expect when installing them. I noticed that there are several manufacturers of thin thermal pads intended for use on processors as thermal paste replacement, but I was unable to find some good information about thick thermal pads.


I also noticed that mu graphics card is covered in something that looks like aluminium foil. The foil is covered in some sort of adhesive substance. On some memory chips there are thermal pads under the foil and on some chips the foil comes in direct contact with the chips and pads are on top of the foil. Is that normal?

 

your better off with a good thermal paste like Arctic silver 5
it works better than the pads on the cpu
not sure about the other pad you are on about though

 

I am not planing on placing pads on processor. My main problems are the big chip next to the processor (northbridge?) and some electronic components covered in white chewing gum. The problem with the big chip is that is is using same heat dissipation element as processor and the element is constructed in such way that there is about 1,5mm between it and the chip. In my opinion that is too much for thermal paste.

 

Bump!

So, if no one knows anything about replacing thermal pads, how do you prevent them from degrading?

 

did you read what stakensturred said? Thermal paste is better, so smear it out carefully (there are better products that arctic silver 5 but I can't remember the names), just don't use to much...There are plenty of thermal paste guides around here somewhere.

 

Yes, I did.
This will maybe offend you, so I offer my apologies in advance:
No one read my original post! I DO NOT want to put thermal paste on processor!!
Instead I have problem because on some places the distance between the chips and the heat-sink is so long that a properly applied layer of thermal paste does not make contact with heat-sink!

On the above indicated locations, thick thermal pads are used. As I said before, they are so thick that I my opinion they cannot be replaced with thermal paste (unless I place 1,5mm-2,5mm of it!!! And when I tried that, I get spontaneous shutdowns!), so I am asking around for some solution to that.

I know that it isn't nice to use bold, italic and CAPS LOCK when asking for assistance, but I don't see any other way.

 

Hm that is indeed a thick thermal pad. The best thing to do then would buy a piece of copper and apply thermal paste on both sides. Thermal pads are bad heat conductors, and its thickness surprises me that your laptop hasn't burned yet.

edit: as you said, applying only thermal paste would not be a good idea.

 

That is an interesting idea! I'll try to get a piece of copper and take a look at the results.

Now I have another question: I have some electronic elements which look like black cubes (look like chokes to me, but I can't read the model number at the moment) and have white chewing-gum like pad on top of them. Would it be safe to replace the pad with thermal paste? It is said on Internet that Arctic Silver 5 isn't conductive, and the part does not have any exposed contacts.

 

A glob of ICD should do the trick.

 

What's ICD?

 

Vga,,, alminieum is there to prevent contact with heat sing and spreding heat.
vga gpu witch thermelpast or you own but make sure its flat becuase you will push the heatsink up preventing memory cooling.

Cpu need thermelpast , or if you find a pad make sure it can handel 70C +/- noordbrige best is the original , make a bal from it and put it back the heatsink wil push it flat

 

The ball idea looks good! Thank you!

Anyway, I got some copper but am out of thermal paste at the moment. When I get some thermal paste, I'll post temperatures before using copper and after. I'm really interested in seeing if replacing thermal pads with copper+thermal paste will lower the temperature of graphics card. Unfortunately I can see no obvious way to measure the temperature of RAM chips (I don't have an infrared thermometer), so I don't know if change will be measurable.