changing thermal paste -m1530

Well i finally decided that i should give this a try after seeing my temps creep up by about 1 degreeC per week. I just ordered some Arctic Silver 5. Ive looked at all the thermal paste topics here and still have a few questions. Firstly, what exactly is the thermal pad and do i have to worry about it? I saw that some people had to remove the pad but when i read through http://www.robertbromfield.com/Tutorials/Changing the thermal paste on the M1530.pdf tutorial i didnt see anything about taking off or replacing a thermal pad.
Secondly, when applying the thermal paste, do i want to cover the whole "black square" of the cpu/gpu with a thin layer?
And lastly, i heard that this may void your warranty. I was wondering, if i did break my lappy somehow, couldnt i just clean it off so that when the tech guy comes i just claim that i never even opened it up?

Thanks!

 

Firstly -
The thermal pad you need to worry about is the small square of thermal paste that's thicker than the other two. Try not to touch it at all, it needs to be bigger to get contact with the component below it.

Secondly -
Yes, you cover the die on top of the CPU / GPU with a thin layer - aim to get it as even as possible across the whole square. The train of thought is definately a quality thin covering; not vast quantities of paste.

Thirdly -
It can void your warranty, but it'll be bad luck if the tech guy spots that you've changed the thermal paste over.

 

So coincidental that I came across a thread about my site and tutorial. Do not take off the thermal pads only the thermal paste.
You will not void the warranty, even a tech has seen mine and it was fine. Plus how will they know?

 

haha yea, great tutorial. Thanks for making one. I was thinking the same thing about the warranty. Ive already had tech support come and take apart my laptop. If the next time i need tech support i would just tell them the other guy must have done it and claim ignorance. One last question, are the thermal pads attached to the processor or the heatsink?

And my AS5 came today (only 2 days and it shipped like 4000km), so ill prob give it a try tomorrow.

 

They're attached to the heatsink, unless something has gone wrong!

 

The thermal pads are not necessary on the CPU. I've taken one apart, and you can see that the thermal pad is worn down right to the heatsink surface over the CPU die, so it's pretty much in direct contact, no pad needed.

Just peel off the sticky pad from the heatsink, and clean the remains from the heatsink and CPU die with a Q-tip and some rubbing alcohol. Then apply your Arctic Silver 5 and re-mount everything.

 

cant get screw 5 off. Its on there so damn tight. Any suggestions?

 

Try harder.

Seriously, don't be afraid to use a bit more force. The heatsink screws are the most secure screws in the entire laptop. Just don't break anything.

 

I thought that you can't remove the 6 labelled screws? I do know there's only one removable screw, whilst the other 6 are bolted on the heatsink itself. Try a different screwdriver maybe? They only rotate until you hear a sort of clinky sound, or whatever it's called.

 

yea the other ones stay on the heatsink, including this one. But it will not budge. All the other ones came loose with minimal force. But i am giving it my all here and now the screw is becoming stripped and it still hastn moved at all. This is getting extremely frustrating. Think i should apply some wd-40?

 

Stop now. Try another screwdriver instead. Most likely one with a head one size smaller. If that doesn't work, try some WD-40, but be careful.

 

If you do decide to lube it up, be very careful. You don't want to get lubricant underneath the heatsink.

 

Same here.

 

The techs that come over to replace stuff don't really know or care about that sort of thing.

I had a tech here this morning to replace my Studio 1535's motherboard, and he took off the heatsink/fan and saw that my CPU and GPU had paste instead of pads, and even the copper mod on my ATi 3450.

 

i did try like 4 different size screw drivers already. Im giving up now. This is ridiculous!!

 

If I understand correctly, the screw is screwed into the heatsink, right? If so, I would give it one last try with the heat sink as hot as you can get it. You could run Orthos CPU Loader to raise the temps to max and then quickly, before it cools down, give the screw one more try in a controlled manner. Heat will make the metal parts expand/contract and it just might be what you need here.

 

wouldnt i want it as cool as possible since cold makes it contract? Also, my temps are now 6 degrees hotter than before my attempt. Im guessing this is because i didnt screw it on as tight as before and the pad isnt touching the gpu/cpu as well.

 

also just read that maybe i should superglue a screwdriver to the screw and hopfeully that will give it enough torque to get the job done. wat do you think?

 

Scratch those last 2 posts, i got the screw off by trying to tighten it and then loosen it. Somehow it worked, i guess the screwdriver hooked on when it tightened, and i got the heatsink off. I applied a fine layer of paste over just the black square part of the cpu and gpu. Is this adequate? My temps seem exactly the same right now idling, but i will try some HL2 in a minute.

 

There is a gap between the GPU and heatsink. Look at the Copper Mod thread in this forum.

 

So after playing like an hour HL2 the temps were like 4 degrees lower than before. Not bad, and i heard it takes 200 hours to cure or something before the temps get even better.

Can you give me a link to the copper mod?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=268081

That's the copper mod thread, with pretty detailed instructions. You'll need to get a small square copper shim.

And yeah, Arctic Silver will take quite a few on/off cycles to reach maximum efficiency.

 

Coppermod only works for GPU's that use a thermal pad.

Im pretty sure the XPS w/ 8600m GT doesnt use one.

 

Ah. I couldn't tell ya if that's true, nor if the 8600M GT has one.

For the record, it works fine with my Studio 1535's ATi Mobility Radeon HD 3450, and it's not even vaguely related to the XPS series. It does have a small gap bridged by a thermal pad.

 

You can do the copper mod on the 8600M GT as well; there's a small gap that is left when you take the old thermal pad off. I just grabbed a bit of copper from the workshop at work and snipped it down to side - fit the gap perfectly and I've got a nice cool laptop.

 

Whether you can apply a copper mod or not, is specific to your 1530.
Some 8600m's possibly have a thermal pad and some don't.

Only if yours had a pad should you consider applying such a fix.

A lot of 1530s do have a blue pad over the northbridge, however this is sufficient, and copper modding that would be pointless.

 

Sorry, that's what I meant - I replaced the thick blue pad over the north bridge for a piece of copper as I tore it when I was changing the paste over :]

(It has been a while since I did it!)

 

1530 have really craps temps, even playing crappy game your temps can touch 90°. 1530 is sold like a half gaming latop, in fact u can just play old game.

 

I dont think mine had thermal pads on the cpu/gpu, just on the thing on the bottom left. Its not thermal pads if i could easily scratch it away right? and your m1530 is in need of a repair albox those temps are wayy to high. And it was a good gaming laptop, when it came out like 2 years ago. Im still happy with its performance. For such an old laptop i think it is still doing pretty damn good.

 

Though there is a thermal pad on the northbridge, I just replaced it with some thermal paste, and my ACPI temps dropped about 20C or so. There really isn't any gap between the heatsink on the M1530, so thermal paste is sufficient.

 

Hey guys I'm thinking of doing the same thing....so wait, I only clean up the thermal paste off the cpu and gpu and apply AS5 but leave the thermal pad on the northbridge? What if it's all squashed and dried up? Wouldn't someone with high temps expect that one to be all melted and needing replacement as well?

I've had my heatsink replaced twice because of overheating and maybe I'm wrong but from memory all mine had thermal pads on them, not just the northbridge. I remember how the technician had to scrape it off when replacing cause it was all dried up on the chips. Also, both times when they replaced them, they just cleaned up the dried stuff and put on the new heatsink (which were new replacements that they took out of boxes). They never applied any thermal paste before attaching which they would have needed to do if my cpu and gpu had thermal paste on them right? That's why I think mine had thermal pads on all 3 plates. Maybe I'll open up the bottom and check.

P.S. I have the aluminum revision of the heatsink so maybe that's why there may be thermal pads on all 3 plates. The one in that guide has the very first copper revision so maybe they used thermal paste for those.



Edit: I think I'm right.

I found a picture of a new aluminum heatsink which is what I have and all 3 plates seem to have thermal pads on them.
http://ebay.falcorsystems.com/XR216 - 1.JPG

As opposed to the copper one which has only 1 thermal pad
http://i13.ebayimg.com/01/i/001/00/3b/94e7_1.JPG

So if you have the aluminum heatsink, yours will have thermal pads on the gpu and cpu but if you have the first copper heatsink then yours won't. I don't know about the 3rd revision of the heatsink which went back to copper.

So I guess my question now is if I should remove all 3 thermal pads and replace with AS5, or just remove the thermal pads on the cpu and gpu and put AS5 on those?

 

Regardless of what Dell has pre-installed, you should have actual thermal paste on your CPU and GPU. The GPU may require a copper mod to fit the gap. You can safely leave the northbridge alone; it does not generate dangerous amounts of heat compared to the other two.