Legion 5, back to original Honeywell TPM7950, results, tests.

As the topic on Reddit was mine, I just did copy pasta and that's it.

As many others I also removed the original TIM seeking better thermals and tried a bunch of pastes without good results CPU wise. GPU was not that bad, but I will talk about the gpu later.
Related topics,

• https://www.reddit.com/r/LenovoLegi..._stock_ram_to_kingston_ram_15ach6h_5800h3070/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/LenovoLegi...erature_survey_please_input_yours_if_you_can/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/LenovoLegi...gion_5_5800h_3070_thoughts_about_thermal_pad/

Package comes like this. It's not dry, it's a cured sheet, phase change material. That's the way it is.


Spread of the MX5 that was applied. Don't mind the thermal pads, I am still trying to get good contact all over. Work in progress.




Measure and cut to size of the dies.



Peel one face, apply, then peel the other face. Is really thin so tweezers out help a lot.



Close up gpu.


Close up cpu.


I could have done a better job but I will open the laptop again soon to check how if the all the new pads will make contact or not, so all this will serve as a test drive.
Temps, I ran Cinebench20, TS and FF before and after. Performance mode (red led), windows in the high performance plan, fans on auto.

Cinebench R20:
In green, MX5

• Max temp 99.91C
• Score of 4969

In red, Honeywell TPM 7950

• Max temp 82C
• Score of 5038

TimeSpy:
In green, MX5

• Max CPU temp 98.5C
• Max GPU Hot Spot temp 75.60C
• Max GPU Core temp 65.70C
• Graphics score 11025
• CPU score 9664

In red, Honeywell TPM 7950

• Max CPU temp 88.22C
• Max GPU Hot Spot temp 80.95C
• Max GPU Core temp 71.70C
• Graphics score 10993
• CPU score 10020

Firestrike:
In green, MX5.

• Max CPU temp 97.1C
• Max GPU Hot Spot temp 70.84C
• Max GPU Core temp 61.84C
• Graphics score 18465
• Physics score 24883
• Combined score 12305

In red, Honeywell TPM 7950

• Max CPU temp 84.66
• Max GPU Hot Spot temp 74.86C
• Max GPU Core temp 66.62C
• Graphics score 18560
• Physics score 25295
• Combined score 12603

https://i.imgur.com/TI0giIH.png

It's clear that Honeywell TPM 7950 makes a lot of difference for the CPU. On the GPU side, MX5 is around 5C more efficient than the Honeywell TPM 7950. But that might also be because now I am using 1mm pads in the vram, so the contact in between the GPU core and the heatsink might not be the best right now, but I will figure this out only next time I open it.

TLDR: As already said plenty times, don't, don't try to "repaste" your Legion unless you already have Honeywell TPM 7950 ready to go. Link for the TIM, https://www.ebuy7.com/item/658779003752.


EDIT


Few hours later my covid test is back, positive, and as I am going to spend the next days at home I decided do open the laptop again to see how are things in terms of the other thermal pads, chokes, vrm, vram. In fact as mentioned above TS and FF reported higher temperatures for the GPU using the Gelid 1mm thermal pad, certainly because it's hard do compress, and created a gap in there not allowing the heat sink to make proper contact with the gpu core.

• In green, vram, Gelid Ultimate 1mm, full contact with all vram chips.
• In red, gpu chokes and vrm, stock thermal pad, making no contact with chokes and a bit of contact with the VRM.
• In blue, cpu chokes and vrm, stock thermal pad, making contact.

Thickness of the stock thermal pads? Can't say, none of them measured 1mm in the uncompressed area.

Redo TS and FF to see if that plus 5C mentioned above was gone, and yes it was. So I am now back to stock thermal pads.

FS
Green, stock thermal pads, better gpu-heatsink contact

• Max hotspot reported 65C

Red, vram with gelid ultimate, worse gpu-heatsink contact

• Max hotspot reported 74.8C

https://i.imgur.com/2bizOQ3.png

TS
Green, stock thermal pads, better gpu-heatsink contact

• Max hotspot reported 70.4C

Red, vram with gelid ultimate, worse gpu-heatsink contact

• Max hotspot reported 81.1C

TD,DR: Don't try to change your thermal pads, or "thermal paste", if you are facing bad temps and is under warranty, use it.
I know some of us have been in the desktop/laptop market for a long time and we always benefited from better thermals when changing the TIMs, but in the case of these Legions is different.

 

Yup, I made the mistake of thinking I could get better temps by repasting my legion. I tried several top of the line pastes and none of them performed as well as the stock Honeywell TIM.

All of the pastes also pumped out so I had to order some of the stock paste and it's performing like new again with excellent temps and no pumpout!

 

I ordered a bunch of these. Many of the small sizes are already sold out, so I have to do a ton of cutting to fit them. Rather than dealing with pads I'd rather just use K5 Pro. On my ASUS I just used thermal grizzly kryonaut for the VRMs since ASUS uses paste anyway.

 

The ebuy link isn't valid now but a quick search allowed me to find a listing of the TPM with 4 sizes.

Thanks for spending the time to get all the results, I think a Legion could be my next gaming laptop but it's interesting that it already comes with a high quality and possibly optimal thermal material. And I hope you feel better very soon!

 

I'm waiting for my Lenovo Legion 7i 3080 to arrive, but it'll be interesting to see how liquid metal performs versus the stock paste.