Replacing thermal pads in HP nx8220

Hi
I recently had to clean my notebook due to high cpu temperature. To get to the fan I had to remove thermal plate with thermal pads and now I have to use new thermal pads... Any similar will do the job, right? Anyway, there is problem with the north bridge chip (on the left on this photo): it has some kind of glue (it's sticky) on it:

What's that? On another forum it was suggested that this is glue from the thick, pink thermal pad (visible on second photo below). So I would like to know what's that and how to deal with it. Another thing is the video chip (right side of photo) thermal pad, there is some kind of brownish semi-transparent stiff foil around it, I'm curious what exactly it is:

(two more pictures of thermal plate & pads can be seen here)
Thanks in advance & Best Regards

 

The stuff on the NB is indeed residue from the thermal pad. You can clean it off. The transparent stuff is probably plastic and there just to prevent the surface components on the GPU from touching the metal part(s) of the heatsink and shorting out.

All in all, you probably don't need to replace these pads unless you've torn them or something. Thermal paste, yes, you should replace when doing this sort of undertaking, but the pads don't usually rot.

 

Clean off all of the glue and junk with >90% rubbing alcohol. You can use q-tips or microfibre cloths to aid in cleaning the surface of the chipset and graphics processor

You should not replace the pads with thermal compound. Thermal compound is much thinner than the pad is. If you replace the pad with paste, the chipset and gpu will not even touch the heatsink.

The best way to get around this is known as a copper mod. It is a small piece of copper which you can use instead of a thermal pad. It takes up the gap the pad once took. Copper is more conductive than a pad, so it will result in lower temperatures.
All you need are 2 copper shims, some thermal compound and thermal adhesive.

Or you can reuse your old pads.

I have copper shims if you want them. Send me a PM and I can sell you some

K-TRON

 

Coffee filters also work great. I prefer to use them over Q-Tips any day.

 

Ok, thanks for the answers, now I know what to do

 

Before trying the copper shim, read this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=379479

The copper shim is kind of a poor workaround for the issue, but is better than nothing (and honestly is better than the stock thermal pad). As I posted in that other thread, by stacking layers of AS5/Copper Shim/AS5 you are trying to pass the heat through three different materials......which is not an optimal solution.

I have tested ICD7 as a thermal pad replacement in a variety of environments (both notebooks and desktops) and it dramatically dropped the temperatures. The one thing to keep in mind is that its not your typical thermal compound, and requires a much larger dab then you are used to applying......but as you'll see from that thread linked above, ICD7 works exceptionally well as a replacement for the thermal pad.

 

Keep the pads that dont go to the chipset GPU or cpu. There are some pads for these little grey boxes ( not sure what they are ) i keep thoes. The other pads for the chipset and the graphics card i remove them and replace them with thermal paste or if i have to do a copper heatsink mod. Oh i also keep the pads for the GPU memory just because i dont want a big mess to clean up in the future.