Aspire V Nitro GN7-572G Repaste: i7-6500U + GeForce 945M

EDIT: Oops. The thread title should be "VN7-572G", not "GN7-572G".

Fantastic. Browser crashed half-way through writing this.

Oh well.

Background Info:

It has been 366 days exactly since I bought my Acer Aspire V Nitro VN7-572G-75AJ. My one-year warranty expired yesterday.

My room does not have air-conditioning in the summer, so ambient temperatures can rise above 30C+
As shown in this picture, temperatures are high. The CPU shot up to 90C within ten seconds, and hovered around 93-97C With the warranty expired and my school exams over, I decided to repaste my laptop with Arctic MX-4

Funnily enough, I saw no repasting guide on the 4th+ generation 15W U series laptops. Absolutely none. All were on 45W HQ CPUs


Acer thoroughly enjoys engineering difficult-to-upgrade laptops. I've owned 4 of them and it has been that way for many generations of its laptops. Seems like the Kaby Lake generation is different...

So I went through the process of unscrewing many screws, prying apart the chassis, unscrewing more screws, removing 8 ribbon cables, unscrewing yet 3 more screws, and finally taking out the entire motherboard and flipping it:




My eyes just about died when they saw this:

https://imgur.com/XRbZk6Q

This is the stock thermal paste they applied. Seems like it was applied blindly. Note the little bottom rectangle (presumably the integrated graphics) does not have thermal paste. That is because heat is transported via a tiny thermal pad.

Oh, and I have no idea why thermal paste is along the top of the CPU. Perhaps it is for cache/Uncore?


https://imgur.com/WDC17dp

The GPU application wasn't quite as bad


So I went through the process of cleaning the surfaces, applying thermal paste, and taking the heatsink back off. It seems like I just so happened to apply a tiny bit more than necessary. So the final attempt looked like this for the CPU:

https://imgur.com/rjxKyCZ

I put a little on the top for the sake of it. And slightly over-did the CPU

And the GPU:

https://imgur.com/Dmd0tqr

Once again, slightly over-did it.


I had hoped for a 10C reduction in temperatures for the CPU. Didn't really care about GPU temps, since they were fine.

I expected a 5C reduction. Ok fine I admit I still expected -10C.

Was I disappointed? Not at all.

Here is the 10 minute AIDA64 Stress Test before repaste:

And after:



Note the maximum temperatures in Open Hardware Monitor - That's a full 10C reduction!

And a closer comparison:




The green and aqua lines are for Core 1 and 2 respectively. Other values don't matter.

Notice how the temperatures are a lot more stable thoughout? I also saw how the MX-4 repaste took a lot longer to reach stable maximum temperature.


Conclusion:
CPU maximum temperature dropped by a huge 10C (Core 2 dropped by 5C, but who cares about Core 2... right?)
GPU maximum (sorry, not shown) dropped by 5C

Max fan speed was 87%, that's one "step" down from 100%, resulting in less noise emission


Further notes:

CPU temperatures are a lot more stable now. Browsing the internet does not cause the CPU to jump from 40 to 50C and back down, so the fan does not constantly start and stop.

I will update this post with real-world temperatures over the weekend.


EDIT: Ugh, had to upload images to imgur, but the links are not expanding. WOrking on it now. Here's the full Imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/Zx4a4


What were your experiences with repasting? I'm interested to see the temperature changes...

My laptop shares the heatpipe with the 15W processor and GeForce graphics card... I wish they put two heatpipes and two fans.

 

So I decided I wasn't happy with the temperatures - The idle temperatures were high (40C) and the CPU took a ridiculously long time to cool to acceptable temperatures.


I found out it was because the strip of thermal paste I put on the top of my CPU didn't do anything. It was just insulating the package...

I also put a reduced amount of thermal paste on both the CPU and GPU:



(Whoo. Autofocus. Yay.)



And for the CPU.

As for the GPU, I shaved off 12C by putting less thermal paste.





Interesting. So now the temps are more jumpy, but definitely stay cooler.

 

why are you not putting any on the little die next to the CPU? that seriously is supposed to have paste.

 

My apologies. Forgot to add info with that.



On the heatsink. there is a thermal pad to cool the integrated graphics. I don't know if I should replace it with thermal paste. I can't take it off because there is an indent for the thermal pad. Should I fill the indent and replace the thermal pad with thermal paste? I've heard that too much thermal paste actually has insulating properties.


Anyway I'm not worried about iGPU temperatures. If the integrated graphics can't handle a game and is running at 100%, I'll switch over to the much more powerful GeForce GPU. Either way, I cannot see the iGPU overheating any time soon