A665 Thermal Repaste

Hi guys,

I'm going to be disassembling my laptop to give it a good clean next week, and I was thinking of whether to replace the thermal paste or not. I'm cleaning it because there are many pores on the underside, and it's been living on a bed for a year... the sight is not good.

I know a lot of you will probably say leave it. But I'm not sure. The processor does run quite hot, although that could be down to the processor being a first gen i7 processor (Clarksfield).

I have the service manual for this laptop (manage to snag it before it got taken down), and it states that the thermal paste is to be applied to the thermal pads. What does this mean? I've never applied thermal paste on thermal pads before... I've done it before directly on processors, and the North/South Bridge on desktops and an older laptop of mine.
Also, can I use any thermal paste I desire? Or is there a specific one? I know the manual states that you should only use one type (forget its name, I'll find it if someone wants it).

Cheers

 

Definitely do it - you'll see quite an improvement in temperatures if you've never done it before! Also, the GPU might use a thermal pad, replacing it with paste will only benefit it.

I recommend Arctic MX-4 - easy to apply, easy to remove, very efficient (among the top 5 TIMs, actually).

You could also replace the North Bridge and video memory thermal pads, but if you're careful and keep the old ones intact, you can reuse them.

Just be careful not to break anything or scratch your processor die ...

 

Have you tried the cleaning yet? I would use canned air first but jam your fan so it does not over rev.

If you do decide to re-paste careful; with the pads as suggested by jotm. My dead er darn cat nailed my north bridge pad last Sunday when I did my ul30vt. I have used several pastes, with very close results, but found cleaning to be super important.

The best cleaner I have found is Articlean; even better than 95% alcohol or freon I used in the past. They use a great citrus based cleaner.

Your skill at pulling the laptop down?

While this is a desktop site, it's interesting to see the temp spread among the contenders for your wallet.

Thermal Compound Roundup - February 2012 | Hardware Secrets

 

Never done it on this laptop before... but I have done it on a desktop and I've seen temps drop by 10c so that's why I was wondering. I guess I got my answer.

You say the GPU might use a thermal pad and replacing it with paste will help... do I remove the thermal pad and apply the thermal paste where the thermal pad originally was? Or do I remove the paste off the thermal pad and add the new paste on to there? (This is what the heatsink and paste looks like (diagram) Droplr•Screenshot on 3.27.2012 at 6.16.31 PM.png)

Funnily enough I have some MX-4 spare! Not a lot but it'll be plenty for one more application. And I'll try not to, haha!

I've tried using compressed air in the past and it hasn't really helped. It's very useful though when the laptop gets too hot and I anticipate it over heating, I just spray it upside down underneath the fan base as there's no fan cutout.

I see... I have an old Akasa TIM clean cleaner which is made of citrus based solvent, so that should be okay for cleaning I presume? It did a good job last time when I cleaned a desktop CPU.

And skill... I've pulled things apart in the past. Albeit not smoothly every time but I guess a lack of experience shows that, although I'm confident about this one after having pulled a few apart since my last tragedy.

I'll be using the Arctic MX-4 grease (or rather what's left of it!)



Cheers for help so far guys.

 

You just peel it off and use thermal paste instead - some companies use thermal pads on the graphic chips themselves and that makes them a lot hotter than with thermal paste...

 

Ah right, I got ya. Monday can't come quick enough!

 

All done since Saturday! Great result! Can play Test Drive Unlimited 2 without having to worry about overheating, temps hit about 75-85c when on load with a game like TDU2. Before it would hit 95+ and overheat eventually. Tested for an hour and 15 minutes and it stayed within that range. GPU hit around 70c and no higher. Did a stress test with AIDA64 too with similar results.

Opening up wasn't much of an issue, albeit scary thinking that I broke something, and the mobo getting rather dirty in places because I have never seen a worse thermal paste application in my entire life. Seriously, it was just pretty all over the processor, and took a while for me to clean off. Repasted both the CPU, and GPU. I didn't replace the thermal pads, because when checking to see if the thermal paste hit the metal, it didn't. And with the laptop under warranty too... probably not a good idea.

The fans needed a good clean too, which I did. Really happy with the result. Do recommend to anyone that wants to do it, do it. Also would like to thank everyone who has replied with information to help me, I really appreciate it! *gives a virtual cookie to all* The only thing I have as an issue is a screw won't go back in... and one of the screw holders came off when I was working on the machine, and I don't know where it goes. Ah well.

 

Cool!.. as long as it's not one of your heat pipe screws

 

Haha yeah, thankfully they were different from all the other screws in that they had a spring on them.