Issue After Arctic Silver 5

I had major overheating issues, so I ordered some Arctic Silver 5 to apply to my CPU and GPU. While waiting for it to come in the mail, I decided to open my computer up and take a look. I cleaned a lot of dust out and idle temps dropped from around 75 or higher to 50-55. This solved all major issues I had, but when my thermal paste arrived I figured I could apply it anyway and get temps down under 50. After applying however, my computer shot up to over 100 degrees within a minute. I reapplied 2 more times trying to put thinner layers (they say not too put it too thick on their website), but results were the same. I tried once more ignoring their spread instructions (Core 2 Duo Mobile) and putting a larger grain of rice sized blob in the center. Now my computer is idling in the 70s (Much better than 100). Any advice on where to go from here? Thanks.

 

UPDATE: The CPU temperatures are actually 50 degrees or lower, but my GPU is idling in the upper 70s when it was in the lower 50s before the paste.

 

If the difference was that big, then something definitely goes wrong, aftermarket thermal paste shouldn't have any negative effects if you applied it right. Did you sit the heatsink firmly on the core? If they don't have good contact with each other, then you are gonna have some major temp problems. Try to apply a very thin layer of AS5 on the core, spread it evenly with a credit card or something similar. Also the AS5 thermal paste has a cure time of 200? hours, you will have to wait some time to see it to reach the optimal result.

 

The heatsink is not level. There could be a small gap between it and the GPU when it fits tight onto the CPU.

 

What is your ambient room temperature? That plays an important factor in determining if a temperature is dangerous or within threshold limits.

You can try undervolting your processor and cleaning out all the crud in the heatsinks. The rest is left to how your manufacturer designed the cooling system.

 

You may also want to double check your application method too (it depends on what you're applying it to).

See:
Arctic Silver Incorporated - Route to Product Instructions for Arctic Silver 5

 

You may also want to double check the Packaging, is it the real AS5 and not just a Knock off TIM. I am amaze as i saw Brandless and cheapo china printing with just the AS5 on it.

 

Can you remove the heatsink, and then without touching the thermal paste, take a picture of the heatsink, cpu, and gpu where the paste is?

 

Real Arctic Silver 5. Room temperature or cooler (It is winter after all). Have applied and reapplied heat pipe before today and had no setbacks of 90+ degrees, so I wanna guess I am not doing it wrong every time now. - CPU (Which HWMonitor says is working completely normally)
- GPU (When it got my computer back down to 70s instead of 100+. This is what I thought was putting "too much", but it worked better. When I smoothed that out it went back to 100+)
- Heatsink (Not sure if this is the best pic to help you guys, but I tried.)

Thanks again everyone. You guys are awesome.

 

From the looks of your pics, you seem have applied too much on them, especially on the GPU. The layer you applied on them should be as thin as possible, and should be almost "transparent" by looking after application in order to achieve best result. More paste will make heat conduct slower and inefficient, "less is more" is the rule in this case. There are actually some good videos demonstrate how to properly apply AS5, I suggest you take a look at this: YouTube - How to apply Thermal Paste correctly part 1
YouTube - How to apply Thermal Paste correctly part 2

 

The thing with that is that I applied it almost identically to the videos you posted and got results over 100 degrees. I applied even less to where I could literally still read "nVidia" on the car, and also got over 100 degrees. The only method that has allowed me to get under 70 is applying more than any video I have seen...

 

Did your laptop come stock with thermal paste or thermal pads?

 

The thing with that is that I applied it almost identically to those videos, and got temperatures over 100 degrees. I also tried applying an even thinner layer (I could read nVidia through the paste), and got the same 100 degree result. I can only get it under 70 again by applying the amount I showed in the picture.

 

Sorry for that double post. It had paste that was really solidified and chunky?

 

Two things to note about this article: How to apply thermal grease on laptop processor >> Inside my laptop

I applied MUCH less than he did.
The thermal paste I removed looked like the stuff he recommends you replace (dried out).

 

Sounds like heatsink isn't actually touching the CPU at all, hence there's a tiny gap. Applying more actually bridged the gap but is not an efficient solution. Any way to reseat the heatsink or maybe try a thin copper shim?

 

That actually makes a lot of sense. I don't really know where to start as far as doing either of those solutions though.

 

Is it a HP notebook? Even if not a shim may still work. The problem with some HP notebooks are that the heatsink assembly sits right on top of the CPU but is raised a bit from the GPU. They used some thick thermal pad to bridge that gap. A copper shim is just a small thin copper plate that can fill that gap.
Just search for "copper shim" on ebay.

Edit: The thickness of the shim is important. Get one specifically for your model. Too thick and it'll risk raising the heatsink from the CPU instead.

 

It is a Dell Vostro 1520. The old thermal paste I removed seemed to be applied very thick, almost as if Dell realized the problem and tried to cover it by just loading thermal paste on? I guess I will look into the copper shim fix.

 

Maybe it's the fact that it came with mail( it's winter! ) so its too cold and it could have damaged tha paste?