Took apart laptop, where can I add thermal paste ?

I just took apart my fiance's HP dv3 because that things hasn't been cleaned in 3 years.
I know that the cpu will get paste, but I see two more cpu's to the right, one had violet sponge looking thermal protection on it, the other grey like sponge.
I'm guessing one is the gpu, don't know about the other.

Can I take those sponges off and put thermal paste on all 3 surfaces ?

 

Remove the 'sponge' clean it with some alcohol or nailpolish remover and put some thermal paste on it ;-) Make sure that the heatsink touches the chipset.(that is what you call 2 other cpu's )

 

Erm, you don't really need to remove the sponge or add thermal paste there. Its much more important to apply thermal paste to the CPU and GPU which are covered by the copper parts of the heatsink. The blue sponge takes up space between the heatsink so you can't really replace it with thermal paste.

 

Yes but what is that blue sponge material made of?

 

Lol, I'm not sure anyone knows the answer to that.

Some kind of thermal interface material.

 

it's a thermal pad, and you dont have to take it out unless you have overheating problems over the chipset - which is rare.

it looks like your cpu was covered nicely with thermal paste, so why did you take the heat sink off anyways ?

 

CPU looks like it's a thermal pad. Use some alcohol and remove the paste, but as noted, leave the blue sponge. It's more than adequate for chipset.

 

Took everything apart because the laptop wasn't cleaned for around 3 years.
Thought it deserved fresh paste, and I had IC Diamond laying around from repasting my Sager.

 

Actually it looks to me like the CPU is the only one without a thermal pad, the chipset's got a fully intact thermal pad that doesn't seem to need replacement and the GPU's got a thermal pad with a hole in the middle that might warrant replacing. The CPU paste is one of those OEM slather jobs with a ton of excess, so repasting would probably be a good idea if the CPU has previously raised any heating questions.

Note that I've only done this a couple times so I humbly subject that I may be wrong.

 

Sorry, that is the GPU with the gray thermal pad. I was looking at it backwards. Typical for me.