Clevo P750DM-G Cooling mod: CPU Shim

I first need to thank Mr Fox for this. Without the videos and info he provides, I probably wouldn't have tried this and would have either needed to buy a new heatsink or just live with high CPU temps. During normal use, web browsing and such, my computer is now silent. I ran benchmarks, and the scores were consistently higher, but it's not statistically significant. I believe it's due to the fact that my system wasn't throttling before the shim, despite how poor the contact was. What is significant, however, were the max temps under load. They never got above 65C and the temp variance between cores is no greater than 2C on average. Before the shim it was hitting 80C. This gives headroom for overclocking, which I might do just to see what its limits are. Another thing I should mention is that my cpu has been delidded, and reloaded with liquid Metal using only a very thin layer of rtv to hold it in place. Some say that the rtv, or silicone adhesive can negate the benefits of delidding if it is applied too think. With that said, the cooling system is very effective in this machine when everything is making proper contact.

idle temps:
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Before shim: 45C
After shim: 30C
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Max load temps:
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Before shim: 80C
After shim: 65C
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The process of adding the shim:
It was very difficult to get the shim and heatsink hot enough to melt the solder (138C), in fact, the cheap 858d clone I was using might have taken an hour to work. Instead, I used a 1500 watt heatgun that worked quite well, a little too well. The entire heatsink started to come apart at one point because all of the solder started to melt. I used extra clamps to hold the cooling fins on, as well as the gpu side heatsink plate and the small copper brace between the cpu and gpu side. Also, I realize now that the shim could have been centered better, but it covers the CPU and is working quite well, so it's fine.

Without shim


With shim


Once solder started to melt and get shiny



Here are the incredibly low idle temps. Ambient air temp right now is 71 degrees.


Below: Shows max CPU Temps after running benchmarks (Time Spy, 3D MarkII and Firestrike)

 

Nice work, well done.

 

It had been about a year and a half since I delidded the 6700k, so I decided to redo it today just to see if it would make a difference. Surprisingly it did. It seems like it dropped 2 to 3C, which isn't as much as I hoped for. Another thing I was hoping for what more consistency between core temps. Core 1 tends to run a few degrees hotter than the others. I wanted to make sure it wasn't because of an air bubble in the liquid metal or some other imperfection. The fact that core 1 is still running hotter than the others make me feel like it has something to do with either the internals or programming. One positive outcome is that it is somehow getting higher benchmarks scores.

Before Liquid Metal refresh


After Liquid Metal refresh


New temps

 

Here are some more photos that show everything that was done. I think I'm going to try and overclock next. If anyone has any advice or suggestions on what I can do to get the most out of this system, I would appreciate it very much.



https://i.ibb.co/0YcgQhC/cpu-and-gpu.jpg

 

Wonderful job. It turned out really good. Congrats on your triumph over the thermal demons.

 

I keep a stack of shims in various sizes and when I have a pairing weakness, I'll slowly keep increasing the size till I reach a point of no appreciable gains temp wise and settle there and either keep using the shim or the last two times ordered custom IHS's with an extra 1mm in height. On my original P870DM-G, I used a Bitspower Silver Lining IHS that already was @ 4.3mm height and it made a world of difference.

The beautiful thing with soldering on a sanded flat shim and a cnc flat IHS is that the solder underneath the shim will compensate for any surface warps or imperfections on the heatsink and give you a better/true flat pairing.

I've tested my 9900k with full perimeter RTV and without RTV and the temps were the same so pressure/contact was not compromised.

Very nice job!

 

I've recently started reading through the overclocker forums and learned that the Kryonaut paste I'm using is not the greatest for laptops. I haven't had any pump out issues, but I also haven't pushed this machine over 80C yet. I will take a look at the paste again if I start pushing temps over 80C since it degrades above that temperature. I might switch to all liquid metal or maybe phobya nanogrease at that time. It will be interesting to see how that effects the temps.
As far as other cooling mods, I'm curious if anyone has experimented with fans. I believe a thicker gauge wire would give them more torque with a faster max speed at the same resistance. Perhaps a difference fan blade setup could also be used to increase airflow for a given RPM. This is assuming they weren't already engineered properly, which they probably were. And even if this was done, it's doubtful it would yield appreciable gains. It's merely a curiosity I have had since I haven't seen anyone mention such modding yet. Aside from that, I could probably benefit from increasing the vent size, I will try that first if I require more cooling.

Thank you for the replies!

 

I've tested Kryonaut a few times now versus other pastes and while it doesn't "suck" it definitely is not top 5 anymore and if you're looking for the best cooling outside of LM, there are better choices.

This was my most current run I posted in another thread testing it against some other thermal compounds. This is probably my 3rd or 4th time comparing it to other compounds when I test a new one in my batch and it consistently places lower.

From the top two on my list below, Frozen is the thinnest and watery and spreads very easy (Probably why there wasn't a ~1 degree drop 24hrs later as it insta-spread) but works best with a very tight pairing. Once the system has warmed up and been used for a bit, it tends to thicken up and really settle into place.

T9+ has a nanogrease type texture but with better temps.