Need advice on dropping the temps on a P775DM3-G (7700k, 1080GTX)

Following my review thread of my recently purchased Clevo laptop:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-7700k-1080-gtx-32gb-ram-1tb-m2-drive.804536/

I am not particularly happy with the temps that I am getting.
I need this laptop to be a workhorse that will need to run intensive tasks such as VR for long periods of time, and I don't want it dying on me after a few months of use.

I am going to open this baby up and attempt to drop the temps. The plan so far only includes deliding the CPU, reapply the thermal compound and attempting a paper clip cooling mod described in this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...mod-for-p775dm2-p775dm3.803626/#post-10505683

I have already purchased the following:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/der8auer-delid-die-mate-2-hs-003-dr.html

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ther...-liquid-metal-thermal-paste-1g-th-021-tg.html

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/262807485164?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

I will keep doing my research until the above stuff arrives, however any tips, guides and general advice on opening up and improving the cooling of a P775DM3-G will be greatly appreciated. I don't even know which tools I will require to open this laptop up yet.

 

Check the thermal pad pressure is even ( also that there are also no pads bent on top of themselves or others) across the board of the heatsink and correct for any slight variations.

 

Good point! I have some old thermal paste lying around, I guess I can apply it first in order to check what kind of contact the heat sinks are making and then going from there...

Looks like ordering better (More spongy) thermal pads may be a good idea... Any suggestions here?

Does anyone know if the Conductonaut Liquid Metal Thermal Paste can be used with this laptops heat-sinks? From reading around I see people recommending more "solid" thermal paste

 

Bought sheets of 5mm x 5mm 0.5mm, 1.0mm and 1.5mm Arctic Thermal Pads. Hopefully that'll be enough to cover all the chips.
https://www.arctic.ac/uk_en/thermal-pad.html

Will be using the thermal pad chart described by iunlock in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...2-g-sager-np9152-np9172.795911/#post-10338566

Will also be using advice from this thread when working on the laptop:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...71dm-p775dm-thermal-paste-replacement.789825/

My strategy with the pads is to first see what kind of heatsink contact I'm getting on the cpu and gpu chips with the current stock pads (I'll apply some crappy thermal paste just to judge how well it spreads), maybe even squash them with my fingers if I need more pressure on the chips.

If that works, perhaps I won't even be replacing them with the arctic ones. I'm just worried about the thickness discrepancy, I couldn't find 2mm arctic ones. Any advice here? Is it still worth replacing the pads even if I'm getting good contact between the CPU/GPU chips and the heatsinks?

@Meaker@Sager I saw you mention in the owners thread about the layout posted by iunlock that all the pad thicknesses can actually be dropped by 0.5mm for the heatsink to make better contact with the chips. How certain are you of this? If I do apply thinner pads, is there a way to make sure that the thermal pads are indeed making sufficient contact with the heatsink and the memory chips?

 

Lay the GPU on the heatsink and check by eye it all sits flat. Install it and then remove to check the CPU area is making contact with faint pressure marks.

 

Ah yes, because the card is detachable. Thank you!

 

Yes, it makes eyeballing it possible, just take your time and check each contact point carefully

 

Will have to be careful as a minesweeper when working on this. Really don't want to mess anything up, especially considering I do have a track record of rushing things when it comes to toys like this.

Another thing that's been keeping me up at night is that I see a lot of people on these forums, as well as the top resellers such as Obsidian, using Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (and other top paste based solutions) between the CPU/GPU and the heatsink. Is there a particular reason why they use paste based rather then liquid metal based solutions such as Thermal Grizzly Canductonaut?

My plan is to use Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut for everything (Delid, CPU, GPU), and am now wondering if that would be a mistake?

EDIT: Just ordered some Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut as well. Hopefully it will arrive tomorrow, so that I can use this weekend to do the work...

The plan now is:
See how much repasting with Kryonaut and improving Heat sink contact improves the temperatures. If it is substantial (Hoping for my GPU to be kept under 80 and the CPU under 90 under full load), I may go ahead with the deliding and applying Conductonaut liquid metal. If not, I may just have to return this thing, get a refund and go to Obsidian...

 

Liquid metal can be dangerous if the fit is not 100% or not applied properly.

Under the IHS lid is always good contact and it's mostly contained.

 

ah yes, of course, don't want it mixing with any of the electric circuitry!!!



Thanks for your replies man. I really appreciate it.

 

Yeah it really holds a grudge and will even travel through time after you!

 

Alright. Some results are in!

First of all. The paste job done by PCSpecialist leaves more to be desired. They put way to much on! I'm pretty sure this is Arctic MX-4 EXTREME.





Here are the temperatures before any modding was done with FN+1 fan mode on.

Aida64 run for 5 mins:

Firestrike Ultra run for 20 mins:


Prime95 run for roughly 5 mins:


FurMark run for 20 mins:


As we can see from Aida and Prime95 the max CPU temp under full load after a few minutes of use is around 95c.

In Firestrike Ultra the CPU temp was around 85c

The Max GPU temp is around 83c as we can see from Furmark, Firestrike and AIDA.

 

All I've manged to do so far is 3 things:
1. Squashed thermal pads around with my fingers, as much as I could.
2. Applied this mod.
3. Applied 5 year old Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste.

First of all the thermal pads are definitely too thick. Upon taking out the Graphics card and placing it on top of the heatsink I could see that without any pressure there was about 1mm gap between the heatsink and the chip. I should really try to replace all the thermal pads with thinner ones, as simpy squashing them with my fingers didn't seem to do much. I found that I need more 1.5mm pads then I ordered, I will try to buy some tomorrow if the local shops sell them.

This is the heatink with the pressure mod applied(two paperclips for the GPU heatsink and cocktail stick pieces for the CPU heatsink):


And here are the results:

AIDA64 for 5 mins:


Firestrike Ultra for 20 mins:


Prime95 for 5 mins:


FurMark for 20 mins:


As we can see, the Max GPU temps went down from around 83c to around 77c.
The CPU temps have pretty much stayed the same.

I am pretty happy with this result! dropping the GPU temps with this mod is what I was really looking for, as the CPU still has the Delid and Undervolts to go, while for the GPU this is almost it.

Also considering that I was only using 5 year old Arctic Silver 5 (which I'm pretty sure is worse then the compound I had on before), I'm pretty sure that using Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut or even Conductonaut will drop the temp by a few more degrees. Replacing the Thermal pads may also make a difference..

Finally I may have put too much paste on the CPU, I used the cross pattern, however the lines I made were quite thick, perhaps, with a bit less and better paste the CPU temps would have also gone down.

Will carry on with this tomorrow.

 

Delid done and Conductonaut applied! The results are pretty good!





Here's a tip I used to make sure that my chips were making decent contact with the heatsink.

First I had cut out a thin, long piece of paper, placed it on top of the clean chips then placed the heatsink on top. By pulling on the piece of paper I could tell how much friction was between the paper, the chip and the heatsink. This gave me a rough estimate of how good the contact was.

I then place 4 tiny (as small as possible) drops of Conductonaut on the four corners of each chip. I then fully mounted the heatsink. I then unscrewed it and examined the heatsink surface. It looked like all four dots on both chips came in good contact with the heatsink.

After doing those two things I was confident that the chips were making sufficient contact with the heatsink and that I didn't need to replace the thermal pads. Therefore I decided to use Conductonaut as my final TIM.

Here are the results

AIDA64 after 5 minutes:



AIDA64 after 16 minutes:


Firestrike Ultra after roughly 20 mins:


Prime95 after 15 mins


FurMark after 20 mins



The max temp on the CPU is staying under 90c even after 15 mins of AIDA, where's before it would start reaching 100c after just 5 mins. Average temperature seems to be around 82c.

Prime95 would also be reaching 100c within 5 minutes before, now it seems to be staying around 81c after 15 minutes! so it looks like an almost 20c drop for the CPU when run alone and at least a 10c drop for the CPU temps in AIDA, running alongside the GPU.

With Firestrike, a more realistic stresser the temps were staying below 80c for the CPU as well.

The GPU Temps have also droped a few degrees by switching to Conductonaut from Arctic Silver 5. Max temp is now 76c in FurMark after 20 mins, was 78 before. With Firestrike only reaching 73c after 20 mins.

I'm pretty satisfied with the results so far. The laptop is now starting to look very usable.

Now only undervolting left to do, and I'll have the final figures.

 

That's why we keep telling people regular TIM is trash , even the best one out there is still bad . #Liquid Metal FTW !!!