HP Pavilion dv6t-7XXX series: IC Diamond 7 Thermal paste swap DONE!

Okay, right off the bat, I'd have to say that I was dead spooked when I did this. But I finally did!

I changed the stock TIM with some IC Diamond 7 I bought earlier. Results will be posted, but for now, some things:

Just this afternoon, I opened up my dv6-7009tx using the service manuals found here (thanks Futureperfect). However, I'd like to warn you guys that there were some hitches I got to when I followed the guide. Especially noting these things:

1. TOP COVER REMOVAL - On step 2 of the top cover removal, the manual tells us to remove three screws securing the cover to the base. I have found that the leftmost pointer points to a screw hole where the baseplate should go in. Meaning, I only removed two screws in this step. Likewise, on step 3, there will be two screws on the ODD bay that is way bigger and different-looking than the rest of the screws in that step. At least for me, that's what I had to remove for this step.

2. SYSTEM BOARD - There is ANOTHER cable you need to remove before lifting the mobo which isn't indicated in the guide. It's a small, speakerwire-looking thing in the rightmost middle part of the board, right where the ODD should slot in. (Sorry, forgot to take photos). I had to remove the power connector from the slot before I was able to pull out the wire, too. It's a weird angle to just yank the power cable out of the thing.

Anyway, going back, some people were wondering how the new dv6t's would fare, heat wise, if we swapped the thermal pastes for a better-performing one. So far, nobody has posted yet, so I decided to jump to doing it.

So taking idle temps from the original setup, I got about 48C, 47C, 48C and 45C on the processor, and about 43C on the GPU (Screenshot got overwritten by the load temps, sorry again.) This was right from waking up to about 30 minutes of light browsing through the web with the HP Recommended powerplan.

Next, I tried playing MW3 for about an hour (plus the end credits) to see how high the temps would be. My temps reached the low 80's (fairly low, since I often get mid 80's when I game) as seen on the first screenshot below. the 650M topped at 74C.

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Here's where the fun starts. Opened up the laptop, changed the thermal paste. One thing I found out was that it seems like HP uses a fairly thick and dark paste similar to ICD7 in look and consistency. The problem is that they put on too much that the TIM is already caking around the processor and GPU dies.

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Cleaned the residue (which is kind of a PITA by the way) and changed the thermal paste to the ICD7. Put the laptop together again, and booted it up.

First thing that happened when I plugged in the power adapter is that it turned on without me turning it on. It displayed a message saying the CMOS needs to be reset (because I pulled the battery when I took the thing apart). After that, no hitches. Everything idled much lower than the previous setup:

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I played MW3 again, and this is what it reached:

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Not much for the processor, but I reckon it has something to do with the CPU die being weirdly lengthwise. I might have put too much paste again

Anyway, that's it. There is a mild improvement on the way the laptop manages heat after I changed pastes. This would probably be much better once I get the notebook cooler I ordered.

 

Can you run the Intel Burn Test and tell us your temps after running it?

EDIT: For reference, here's my unmodified (but with a Coolermaster U2) test. These are the highest temps I have ever gotten with the cooler.

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Hey Alex. (I'm assuming that's your name ) Gimme a sec to do it. But just so you know, I just ran a render job on this a while ago for a video project. It never went higher than 85C.

EDIT:

Here's my results. Hm. IDK if I'm running it right, but it seems to run at only a constant ~2.1ghz on the cores. Is that how it really runs?

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By the way, why does yours say ES? It's weird, doesn't ES mean engineering sample?

 

Can you use CoreTemp to log it? It'll show the max temps.

 

You should be getting the full 3.1 ghz on all cores and ~67gflops like Sailorboy. Did you change any power settings? That can disable turboboost.

HWMonitor and HWiNFO both show the max temps, but it seems like the CPU wasn't clocking up. :/

 

Oh crabs. I forgot. I did put the maximum power state on 95%. Haha. Redoing it now.

EDIT: Here we go. By the way this is done on a flat wooden surface. So I'm pretty sure temps would be lower using a cooler or something.

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VERY NICE! Kudos kisetsu17

 

How did you get your keyboard off? I tried to pop mine off but its giving me problems. Scared I might snap it in half.

 

Make sure you took out the two screws securing it. I just used my thumb to jab the underside of it on the DVD bay. It won't snap. I was quite scared too, but it got off.

 

This is awesome, thanks kisetsu. My 7000 is with hp again after the first round didn't help the heat. All 4 cores and GPU peg to 102C after 10 min of any load including games, video rendering, etc.

I even made my windows background the CPUID screens so they could review. 2nd time a charm, I hope. If not, I'll paste myself