eMachines Laptop: Thermal Stupid

So, 5 years ago my parents bought an eMachines laptop without consulting me. As you can guess, it wasn't a particularly good machine. It has a 2GHz Celeron processor which had one temperature (HOT) and its fan had one speed (TURBINE). I finally got it away from them by replacing with with an R51. I decided to open up this bad mother trucker up and see if I could apply some AS5 to maybe keep it a little cooler. Here's what I found:

http://i34.tinypic.com/amv0go.jpg

Basically, there was a silver piece of foil between the processor and heatsink. Now, I know older processors just had thermal-conductive pads, but this just looks like aluminum foil. I'm going to replace it with AS5 anyway, so I peel back the pad and find this:

http://i38.tinypic.com/255ma7q.jpg

Thermal grease... under the piece of aluminum foil. Now what is the point of thermal grease if its covered by a pad that won't make perfect contact with the processor? GEEZ! I've heard of similar things on the xbox360 gpu, so, it might not be a mistake, but it just seems stupid.

I've applied some AS5 and it seems to be staying cooler.

 

Sounds like a fun and interesting project.
Thermal stupid indeed, I've never ever heard of any company ever using something like that.
Did you know the actual temperature readings beforehand? It would be interesting to compare now.

 

There is nothing stupid about manufacturers using "wrapped" thermal paste/grease. The machines are line-produced, letting the grease running all over is not a good business idea of packaging.

After 5 years in service and to be revived again with just new thermal paste/grease - i would say that your parents did make a very good choice

By the way, i use a combined AS5 with a thin copper spacer between the cpu and the heatsink on my still running strong eMachines m6805

cheers ...

 

Well, it didn't get much use over the 5 years because they were afraid the jet engine was going to burn down the house or cause the thing to fly away.

The heatsink already had a copper spacer, the aluminum foil didn't provide much thickness. And I still think its a bad practice. The point of applying thermal paste is so that the contact between the heatsink and the CPU doesn't have any gaps. Air is an insulator not a conductor, so microscopic gaps can prevent efficient heat transfer. I don't see how this can be achieved with a piece of aluminum foil. Many companies mass produce their computers and still manage the apply thermal compound without a wrap, they've been doing it for years.

 

I ripped apart a Acer 5000 last night, was shutting down for thermal reasons. Same setup. Nothing but a sad little piece of foil, no paste at all. I threw some paste on there and heating issue went away, even after a 14 hr stress test. I guess anything to save a buck eh?