HP dv8t i7 720qm replace heatsink & fan or not?

I am still using my HP dv8t 18.4" i7 720qm notebook. Works great and reliably, but the fan noise bothers me. Before spending $ on a new fan and heatsink, I would like to hear if there are any success stories of noise reduction gained from performing fan/heatsink replacement and repasting. The laptop works flawlessly, but the fan is fairly loud even when not under load.

 

I would definitely just repaste. It probably hasn't been repasted in several years, and the paste is probably all dried up, meaning the fan has to work harder to cool the CPU as the paste isn't doing it's job.

 

I just upgraded my lowly G6 i3 to an i7 2720qm. With the extra 10w more being used at high CPU utiltization, the heat is not as bad as I thought. Though my upgrade did include dedicated GPU. In its self it made the fan kick in constantly. I tested with more heat sinks in key locations. I will be doing the extra heat tube with heat sink mod that many gamers do. Mine will be based on the DV series, which has the extra heat tube pointing at the front of the case, near the speaker. I may find a micro fan to pull air from the opposite side, while making cooling slots to give a symmetrical look (right side air pulled, left side air pushed), and allow for better cooling. It should allow for minimal fan speeds and less noise. Believe it or not the speaker inclosures, don't do much. They more or less keep the speakersin place. You could glue cut sections of the speaker and modded enclosure, to stay in place. Once the speaker enclosures are trimmed down, there is plenty of room for air to pass and also fit the extra heat sink. Some minor trimming on the bottom of the cover, to remove obstructiona to fit the heat sink. Also you will need to heat the tube and remove the heat sink, as to flip the tube and use the heatsink backwards. A mirror of its original shape.

It is best to look at similar looking laptops, with and without switched gpu. The bottom cover and heat sink assembly. The Envy has a close layout to my G6, the DV also has, but it has the ports all in different locations. The ports don't mean much unless you want to swap main boards. What's the give away is how the heat sink layout is done, and can be copied, or allow for creative options.

 

Thanks for this advice. I finally got around to repasting and decided with going through this work, I might as well upgrade the CPU. So for forty bucks I bought a used Intel CPU i7 840qm (same TDP as the stock i7 720qm), installed it and used Arctic Silver 5 after cleaning the heatsink, GPU and new CPU. It is still loud under load but when the load drops the notebook very quickly reduces the fan speed. The original paste indeed appeared very dry. I kept the original thermal pads for the video memory and other items as they still appeared to be in good shape. Hopefully that was not a mistake.