Asus G53JW gpu repasting question( yellow film around the die)

Hi,
Long time reader first time poster. A few days ago I decided to repaste my gpu with gelid gc-extreme. When I took the laptop apart I noticed that there is a yellow film around the gpu die and some dried up paste underneath it. So I cleaned off the old paste and applied the good stuff but sadly my temps have barely improved, if at all. Before the repaste I was sitting at 93 celsius after running furmark for almost 6 minutes.Now after the repaste it takes 12 minutes to reach 93. I also tested the witcher 2 and after an hour of gaming the gpu reached 88 degrees. Ohh and I have also replaced the stock thermal pads with Phobya ultra 0.5mm. Would removing that yellow film affect the temp ? What's it for anyway ? could it be preventing the heatsink from making a better contact with the gpu die ? If someone could shed some light on this, I'd really appreciate it.

 

The yellow film around the die is kapton tape.


Kapton tape is used to insulate the micro transistors to prevent causing short if it comes in contact with the heatsink. If you remove it you are setting yourself up for failure.

If I were you I would just buy a replacement heatsink and see if it makes a difference. They can be found cheap on ebay.

 

Wow thank you for the quick reply ! I'll probably order a new heatsink in the near future. I think that the cooling design in the g53 series is not as efficient as it could be. For example when I raised the back of the laptop and ran the same stress test my temps reached 93 degrees in Furmark but now it took about 50 minutes. In more demanding games such as the witcher 2 the temperature stays at 84oC. I guess raising the back improved the airflow... ohh and the bottom cover doesn't get as hot as before. Thanks again !

 

first of all welcome to NBR ! you can use electric tape as an insulation on the replacement of the yellow tape....secondly, make sure u dont spread the paste too much just use a PEA method as it is very simple and easy to be done and check the temperatures again and YES you can remove the YELLOW tape in the gpu dye as i am myself using an electric tape as an insulation

 

Do you think that removing the film would help with the temperature ? I was thinking about cutting it out around the frame so that the tape still covers the micro transistors. Do you know what I mean ? I think it would lower the heatsink by at least half a millimeter. Ohh and yeah I did use the pea method...

 

Very little heat comes from the chip outside of the top of the die, so no. If anything, the tape improves the temp a tiny amount by insulating heat radiating off the heatsink. The reflective tin-foil like film some laptop-makers use is for that. But the purpose of it is to avoid short-circuits from uninsulated wires somehow coming in contact with the soldier points, or goop spills on the chip. Or, it doesn't do any harm to keep it there, or to replace it with some insulating electrical tape. But it might be a bad idea to use electrical tape, since the heat from the heatsink will likely melt the glue in the tape. You can buy cheap heat-reflective insulation tape in any hardware store, though.. Stuff you would normally use on engines, or for protecting graphite parts in a chassis, that sort of thing. But the temperatures you're staying at won't make that necessary by any means.

Basically, unless you're utterly careless with assembly, use liquid metal goop and spill huge amounts, or stab the solder points on the chip with a screwdriver, and the heat-sink doesn't lead heat to the radiator(so the temp near the chip die is higher than it should be - and even then, 100 degrees isn't going to melt the soldier points on the actual chip even if the copper was in direct contact with them. It's a different story for the soldier points on the power cables and certain other second pass "low" temp solders on the mainboard, though) -- the tape makes no difference. But it's the kind of thing that makes sense to use as a precaution when assembling laptops in a factory.

 

It's a tiny expense for the manufacturer which gives a small reduction in return rate basically with that tape, it's not usually needed but not bad to have.

 

Thank you all for the explanation.I'm still a noob when it comes to these things so if I were to cut the film around the gpu frame would that lower the temp ? I'm just looking for simple ways to improve my temps... yeah I know I could invest in a good cooling pad but I just don't feel like carrying it around all the time. Based on what I read on this forum it seems that g53 users are gettings similar temps some get around 80oC others 85-88oC. Heh I'm a little bit OCD about my temps it'd be great if I could find a way to stay at 81-83oC. btw I'm running stock clocks and the ambient here is around 26oC.

 

As mentioned unless it gets caught and moves out of position it will have no negative impact.

 

^ *nods* or said in a different way: unless you put tape across the chip die, it makes no difference.

What matters is the quality and state of the heatsink array. It could be damaged after collecting too much heat, if the radiator wasn't in contact with the array, or the radiator was full of dust (although this is very rare, and kind of difficult to achieve with the temps you typically get in a laptop). Or if something was bent out of shape so some of the sugar-cone spin inside the heat-pipes broke, or something like that. That's possible, but you can probably assume that it's not going to matter more than a radiator that actually works, all the way until a time when it's cold because the cooling array isn't leading any heat at all. 4 degrees could be the cooling array itself, but very likely it's just the radiator fins that are full of dust or something.

Then it's the actual paste-job and the contact point on the chip-die, which is usually the problem. Take care that you're not using too much goop. It's not supposed to be a "heat-conducting pillow" - the conductivity through the goop is lower than what you get from direct contact with the copper. So what you're ideally supposed to do is to trade lower conductivity for increased contact area. And therefore get better overall heat conductivity. If you put on too much goop, and you're using fairly thick goop, you are basically insulating the chip. (You can read the guide in the sig for an.. it turns out... unusually long-winded explanation on how this works >_<).

So look at the paste-job first. And then clean the radiator.