I did a repaste on my Laptop... did it make a difference?!

[@R2debo_]

When repairing a laptop, you should disconnect the PSU and the battery. And press power button for a few seconds, to discharge caps that still might be charged. The discharge even applies to desktops and servers. You dont wanna risk the hardware when i accidently touch a wrong component or trace.

[@PatalJunior]

True, my lenovo has a cool feature on the bios that if you activate, the computer shuts off, and fully disconnects the battery. Don't know how it works, but I know it's mean to be used for disassembly. Always cool seeing brands adding these features to aid repairs.

[@WildRapier]

I was just going to say the same. Capacitors definitely charged. I've watched someone drop a mounting screw on a motherboard without dissipating the power and take it out. Screw got magnetically drawn to a coil while bouncing around. How do you miss the simple things with 25 years of XP? Jay...?

[@justfasial01]

Anytime you have a high capacity cap, especially in a PSU, it's connected in parallel with a resistor so as soon as the power is disconnected the cap starts discharging, it's a safety feature. You can read up on "Bleeder resistor" or "discharge resistors". So this really isn't necessary unless the manufacturer skimped on $2 worth of parts. Disconnecting the battery is all you need.

[@Chopper153]

@@WildRapier Screws got drawn to the coil because it had a ferrite core and not because current was flowing through it. Even if current was flowing, it wouldn't be attracted as it's AC. Also, inductors don't store any charge when switched off.

[@BladeLuoxi]

Anyone knows what laptop did he use? And especially what software is that? "Control center" or something?... Looks useful, remind me the Msi Afterburner😂... But doesn't look like from Msi, Asus, HP, or Razer software😅...

[@Ben-Rogue]

I'd like to see more gaming and productivity laptops that aren't so concerned about being thin and light, and are more focused on cooling, acoustics and ergonomics. If you want to use a laptop for any extended period, you need it propped up at the rear anyway, to reduce wrist fatigue and prevent it from getting too hot. Adding an extra 20-30mm of height at the rear for a large heat sink with some decent airflow would make sense for many reasons.

[@my-yt-inputs2580]

Your comment was copied and pasted from an obvious porno spammer. A bunch of people liked that post/comment.

[@Ben-Rogue]

@@my-yt-inputs2580 I guess it was because it was an early comment... You'd reckon Google would have found a solution to the spam accounts by now.

[@jipeh]

Framework 16

[@bituniverse8677]

Those old Acer Predators man, thick boys

[@devilfish79]

Eluktronics has a water-cooled gaming laptop that's not worried about being thin and light. Not sure how well they function. Maybe Jay can do a review of that models performance.

[@ScullyBrewing]

I re-pasted my XPS 15 7590 the other day with Noctua NTH-1. It's a 4 year old laptop and the paste was crispy upon opening it up. I did see a couple hundred points improvement in cinebench. It was able to hold clocks higher for longer at the start of the run and max temps came down 10c on average across all cores. Definitely worth doing as now I can look into setting a quieter fan curve

[@handyandqu]

Both Dell laptops I've changed past out to that noctua have see upwards of high single digit to doubly digit improvements, brand new within the first week of owning it. Appalling how bad the past or application they have is. Nice thing is make it easy to access so it's like 10-20 min max and you just gained substantial performance increase. Infuriating that it needs to be done out of the box though. Like really? Yhe tenths of pennies that were cheaped out on.

[@TimberWulfIsHere]

Issue with nth1 is that the paste breaks apart overtime on laptops and falls to the side. Doesn't have that issue in desktop applications but.

[@ScullyBrewing]

@@artvandelay9131 No they seemed fine, werent dried out or anything and my temps on other components were within spec so I didnt bother. I was mainly interested in lowering the CPU/GPU temps so that I could reduce fan noise on the cooler.

[@rammen4]

Can I ask how long it lasted for? :)

[@IceBlueJoe]

Replaced the thermal paste on my 2021 A15 (3070 and 5800H) I went from 90-95 down to 65-70 in game. The paste was also prety crusty. Used Noctua NT-H2 and replaced the putty with ARCTIC TP-3 thermal pads. Upgraded the RAM to 32GB now getting 5 second boot up (not that 8 seconds prior was slow lol)

[@xMcNuggetBuddy]

I've owned several gaming laptops. One thing I've learned for sure is you CAN always do a better thermal paste job than the factory. I've always dropped them by a few degrees by doing a thermal paste swap right from new.

[@233kosta]

I think most of the time OEMs will favout long-term consistency over raw performance, so as long as you're willing to stay on top of it, there's performance to be had.

[@jollygrapefruit786]

I have a delta 15 MSI laptop, and I replaced my thermal paste today. It was annoying as hell because the motherboard was upside down, so I had to take the entire MB out to access the heat sink. Definitely watching a tear down on my next laptop to avoid that.

[@deher9110]

nah cuz some actually use ptm7950

[@spudtsar9377]

Same. Had an Acer Predator 300 with a GTX 1060. I cleaned out the factory paste, put on some decent quality stuff and lowered overall temps by noticeable tens of degrees.

[@dharshdanube6911]

@@spudtsar9377 what do you think are the best thermal pastes for laptop(mine gets to 90 cel easily while playing games)

[@PottsieVol]

Just did this with the Dell Inspiron 1564 I used back in college in 2011. Cpu temp dropped 20c. I also swapped to a ssd using your videos and added another stick of ram. Runs surprisingly well for its age!

[@marledanimefan7186]

Nice ! I used my non working laptop as a guinea pig. I opened it, repasted and cleaned the fan a bit and after i put it together it worked again. That gave me the confidence to build my own pc so i dont have to bother with repasting a laptop again.

[@daniel_rossy_explica]

I'm quite the reverse. I have years of building, dis assembling and reasambling PCs, but I don't want to even touch a laptop since I see it as a sealead box.

[@IzanaKunigiri]

​@@daniel_rossy_explicaDepending on the laptop, they can be a dream to work in or utter hell to work in. Things like the Alienware machines of recent years are an absolute headache if you don't like the process as the cooler is UNDERNEATHE and attached to the motherboard, Whereas things like Lenovo's X1 Carbon are an absolute Dream to work on with the cooler being a SUPER EASY replacement (4-6 screws and 1 plug after the bottom panel, Thats it. OFC after unplugging or removing Battery if you worry about that.) both Dell and Lenovo in particular put their service manuals online for the public. Dell calls them Service guides (Or in some cases it's merged with the User Manual) and Lenovo calls them Hardware Maintenence Manual, Both of which give a real good idea how complicated it is for your particular machine model. I used to do In-Warranty repair for Dell and Lenovo Machines for a living.

[@puneetarora1714]

You guys should have shown the second part on video where jay applied thermal paste on the memory chips, regular repasting is common now for the viewers of this channel, how to do it on memory chips is something I would definetly try now

[@watercannonscollaboration2281]

You should try using some phase-change material next time, like Honeywell’s PTM7950. It comes in as a sheet, lasts longer and performs in my experience even better than pastes like GC Extreme, KPX, and MX-5. Lenovo actually uses it on their newer (I think 2022 and after) Legions and it’s so good it’s actually a bad idea to repaste those laptops

[@themadatheist1976]

Did that to my 10 gen MSI GL65 with K5 Pro on the stuff, pretty good stuff. I think that what MSI came with stock.

[@HiPickle]

It seems like that's what they were using on the memory

[@samimsamet]

I have a problem. I have a Gigabyte Aorus model laptop. I first tried Kyronaut and then MX6, but the CPU does not go below 90 degrees, what should I do?

[@hyedefinition1080]

@@samimsamet don't use Kyronaut. Use a thicker paste like a CoolerMaster Maker, GC extreme, or Honeywell pads...

[@julianboyd8719]

@@samimsamet clean out the fans, keep it elevated and undervolt if it's an Intel CPU.

[@TheGameBench]

I'd be tempted to try PTM 7950. Performs better than paste, but doesn't have the risks of LM and the copper won't absorb the PTM like it does gallium.

[@kgt8742]

I already tried it on my office laptop. It's way better and lasts longer than normal thermal paste. It also doesn't get pushed out by pressure as much as thermal paste when the heatsink is expanding due to heat.

[@osamabinlaggin69]

I use it on my matebook 13, improved temps considerably and doesn't get pushed out like some pastes do.

[@thefeaj]

i use this on my ga,me laptop 12700h and 3080, both dont go over 68c during gaming

[@Jimmys_TheBestCop]

I 100% agree. Also with gaming laptops with aluminum bottom cases you just need to make thermal contact between the heat pipes and the bottom case either with honeywell ptm 7950 or thermal putty depending on distance. Creating a much larger heat sink which you can either custom build dock or buy one for pretty cheap that can cool the entire thing while making almost 0 noise.

[@Kirsutan]

Exactly, normal paste pumps out pretty fast on bare dies like laptops and GPU's.

[@ssfdre38]

I have a gaming laptop as well and what I do as well is also lift the back of the laptop with my old switch case and it helps to get more airflow in the laptop and bring the temps down. You should try it and if it helps with your laptop, maybe print a small bracket for it that you can keep in your bag

[@RGR_Gaming10X]

When I repasted my laptop I used K5 thick thermal paste for the VRAM and spots there was pads. Works great.

[@prarmageddon]

You should use ptm7950 and thermal putty like upsiren on all other components instead of thermal pads, especially since you didn't know stock thermalpad thickness. Btw on gpu memory chips manufacturer used thermal putty by the looks of it.

[@soulsilver6799]

UP. I hope jayz sees this

[@martinMVG]

This would make a good video, I've used ptm7950 for my cpu, gpu and my laptop and all of them now have lower temperatures. It's not as good as liquid metal but its hell of a lot safer.

[@TigTex]

Yeah, the improvement Jay saw is probably because the vrams are unable to dissipate their heat efficiently, causing the rest of the laptop to run a little bit cooler. It's perfect to kill the VRAM. I bet that thermal paste will last a couple of months, tops. PTM7950 + K5 pro is the way to go

[@tecnosalva14]

@@TigTex instead of K5 use Upsiren Ux Pro. Doesn't leave oil residue, reusable, much easier to clean. laso K5 seems to boil at high temp, so not really good for laptop

[@harrydijkstra9936]

@@tecnosalva14 K5 Pro is trash, seen many user "improvements" with that stuff. PCB's covered in outgassed silicone and isolating air bubbles where the putty should be.

[@danteshier5214]

I got an older PC, Digital Storm Equinox from I think 6 years ago maybe 5. I recently re-pasted it. Before I had to run it with a heavy under-volt to keep it cool even at idle. Now it runs fine at stock speeds. I think it was idle at 70C before or something, and now its idle at high 30 to low 40s Very happy with it. Oddly enough the old paste wasn't that dried out and had a good spread.

[@ロース-z7m]

Yes, especially with older notebooks, it's worth to repaste CPU and GPU chips, it significantly reduces noise level. I had a very loudly 2nd hand notebook, reopened it, and found out that the paste was completely removed 🙈After repasting, the thing got silent. Notebook are are a nightmare in this regard, because you need to disassamble the whole thing to get access to the CPU or graphic chip. Those devices should really have a better design in this regard.

[@EyeOfInfinity-t5g]

Do not change liquid thermal pads for video memory to thermal paste! Never do this. Due to high temperatures, the thermal paste is squeezed out over time and a terrible overheating of the video memory begins. After that, the video memory fails.

[@cassiohui]

I recently learnt about thermal putty as a thermal pad replacement, seems to work pretty good.

[@mikes2381]

I've never really understood why people are concerned about putting liquid metal on a laptop for the fears of the TIM running out of the interface. Is it a concern? Sure. Is it more of a concern than on a *Desktop where the CPU to cooler interface is **always** vertical* ? I really doubt it. Laptops spend most of their time flat or flat-ish, where the LM isn't even being pulled by gravity and this is the only time when a laptop is ever hot and the LM has a higher likelihood of flowing. But in a desktop it goes through many heating and cooling cycles while staying vertical and gravity always pulling the TIM down. It just makes no sense to me. And if someone thinks that the different sides that one would put their laptop on is the issue, the TIM has to *travel* from one side to another in order to pool up and drip off. This requires time and is helped by temperature and if it didn't drip off one side, it isn't going to run and drip off another. This argument just doesn't make sense to me given that everyone thinks it's fine for desktops. Edit: Would masking tape be enough to stop the LM if it did drip out? Or a thin layer of hot melt glue. I haven't tried hot glue vs LM.

[@jobathano1660]

The difference is you brick your whole laptop, from usable to e waste. In a desktop you can easily change the component if it gets damaged.

[@FaustRSI]

In the FACE of everyone claiming it is impossible to change thermopads with thermopaste. Not ALWAYS, I agree, but sometimes this is not only possible, this is also a BETTER solution.

[@kalmtraveler]

Just my experience from corporate hardware days... when you buy a new off-the-shelf kind of laptop really anywhere, there's a chance that it was assembled quite a while ago and was just sitting around either in a warehouse or store shelf and the thermal paste may have already dried out. Every corporate Dell laptop I've had was in this same boat - the fans would run nonstop because the thermal paste was already totally dried out by the time it was deployed to me. Repasting them made them behave as expected - fans off/silent unless being hit by a high load. I've also seen that on both my Razer laptops.

[@markjakobsen1334]

Put liquid metal in mine and it helped a little bit. Undervolted the GPU and it made a MASSIVE difference.

[@dextrodemon]

you can just use normal thermal paste to make a "moat" around liquid metal

[@jasonh4534]

Isn’t Liquid Metal also more reactive with non-plated copper… So it “dries out” quicker from the added reaction between the metals. It also pits the plain copper more as well. Personally I wouldn’t use Liquid Metal in that situation. I reposted my laptop with MX5, it worked well, but it only lasted 6 months. It dried out, and temps went crazy; probably why it was replaced with MX6 after such a short time on the market. Currently using Thermal Grizzly, and it helped a lot. I have had good results from it on my desktops, as well as IC Diamond paste.

[@Code_String]

I'd avoid liquid metal. While on paper it can be pretty good, you'd have to apply a very small amount and make sure you get decent contact to eliminate the risk of something going wrong. Honeywell's PTM7950 is an overall better choice for both performance and hardware safety reasons. I've repasted two ROG G15AEs so far with PTM7950 for the dies and Upsiren UX Ultra Pro for the other chips and the results have been impressive. The stock liquid metal in those units' atrocious.

[@DoctorHitman]

I have an ROG g15AE. thank you for this man.

[@bradhaines3142]

is it a pad or a paste? im trying to get some and its hard to trust any of the sellers on amazon

[@TRC98]

ive repasted all the GPUs and laptops ive ever owned and its always made a huge difference on temps and acoustics

[@J0ttaD]

Just dont put too much liquid metal and it wont drip. My old tower pc never dripped had it for 6 years with liquid metal on. Thing is vertical all its life and never had problems and pretty sure liquid metal kinda solidifies. Just bc ps5 had liquid metal problems dont let it p*ssy out. Put liquid metal Jay.

[@nef4ri0us68]

Interesting enough, not a whole lot of people are talking about using thermal putty, not paste. I’m pretty sure that’s what the vram had on it. Lots of nerds don’t recommend using thermal paste on vrams since there is a bigger gap between them and the heat sink and I think most pastes change viscosity and pump out fast. The reason why putty is recommended is because it’s thicker to fill the gap and doesn’t change viscosity when heated up. Now having said that, I just repasted my ASUS 733zw with ptm7950 on both gpu and cpu, and Mx-6 paste on the vrams, chokes and everything else since Mx-6 allegedly is also resistant to changing viscosity at higher temps. I didn’t use Liquid Metal on the CPU again since a good 75-80% ran out. Thoughts?

[@kimoosaw]

The thing on the Vram is thermal foam Its like a thermal paste that expands just like a foam

[@benarcher45]

Why not just use the Kingpin thermal paste as calking around the die to keep the liquid metal in? Wouldn't the liquid metal eat away at the copper heat spreader?

[@JohnAlzayat]

Jay reminding me I need to repaste my laptop for the like 5th time lol

[@oappi4686]

yea I think Jay made good call not putting liquid metal there. I put on mine, and sealed it with Scotch Super 33+ electric tape which worked perfectly, but my cpu &gpu blocks were a lot smaller.

[@andyo1872]

If you are going to use liquid metal, you may consider put zinc plating on your copper heatsink. Many liquidmetal would absorbed by copper. Which results 'drying' liquidmetal. (I do re-apply liquidmetal time to time due to that reason. It is quite annoying. )

[@VanBourner]

those memory pads maty have been phase change thermal interface material, that starts being goopy at certain temps but appears like a soft doughy dry material when cool enough. They are usually used where nobody expects you to change the thermal interface material as they last really long without drying up. But they do not really conduct heat until they reach their operating temps.

[@jackgray1402]

I put the Honeywell phase change material on my laptop and it has made a noticable difference with better cooling and performance.

[@krypton1260]

I repasted my laptop in hopes of getting the temps down. All that ended up happening was that the CPU got higher boost clocks/longer boost. Temps remained the same. Turns out the AM5 CPU boosts until it hits the APU thermal limit, which was set at 92°C or close to that by default.

[@thanos879]

I was literally just thinking about this today and researching whether I should do this to mine.

[@jjann54321]

I can't tell you how many "almost broken" laptops I have *fixed* just by cleaning the fan, intake/exhaust and repasting the CPU (and GPU if applicable). I would say that 75% of the time the reaction is, "this runs almost like it's new again." I always encourage them to use their laptop on a hard, flat surface and NOT a blanket, but no on ever listens. Oh, and when your laptop smells like "burning skin", it is, *burning skin* (cells) and hair. Yum.

[@1BadVan]

Did a repairs on my wife’s blade 15 base and made a huge difference on the gpu temps when gaming. A solid 12-13 degrees drop under load

[@Sorjal]

If you want to go the liquid metal route you might be able to put a thin bead of say black rtv sealant around it. That should prevent the liquid metal from getting anywhere else, but it would make future disassembly more difficult as you’d likely have to use something to “cut” the sealant like thin wire, fishing line, or something scalpel like to be able to reach in far enough. Just pulling it off would likely kill the cooler as they tend to bend very easily.

[@MrDoyle-ky4he]

I had an old laptop that I used for years, and it ran hot as hell. Never knew anything about computers back then. Decided to pull it from storage and clean it while also replacing all thermal paste. The old paste was POWDER. When I put the new paste in, thing ran as quiet as the day I got it. 1050ti + i7-10700 that makes a fantastic emulator box.

[@squeegel3904]

I LOVE when people lead most actions with "go ahead and..." It truly is the epitome of originality.

[@張彥暉-v8p]

Just use honeywell 7950 instead, performance is closed to liquid metal and has way better longevity than normal paste.

[@John-gm8ty]

watches jay apply a whole tube of thermal paste.. GOD DAMN IT JAY!

[@bigearsinc.7201]

With a liquid metal solution, i discovered just making a gasket out of really compressible foam works very very well. My laptop hasnt had any issues and the foam stops the metal from getting out. Works pretty well.

[@HaPKoMaTo3]

On old laptops changing your HDD to SSD and changing paste makes HUGE difference.

[@raifthemad]

Mostly thanx to windows bloat. Back when win10 came out, it booted and operated pretty fast even from hdd's but a year or two of updates, and it moves at a snails pace on those.

[@fissavids8767]

​@@raifthemadnot true. It's because hdd's were never meant to be carried around and they would all get damaged. Writing an image of the old hdd to an SSD would result in the same performance jump. Source: I revived many laptops

[@raifthemad]

@@fissavids8767 All I was saying, is that when win10 came out, it booted and worked pretty fast even on hdd's. And after years of updates, windows has become so bloated, that hdd's are a very slow option for that os now. I know. I fix electronics and back when first versions of win10 came out and were installed on machines with hdd's, they loaded stuff at ok speeds. But after a few years of updates, even installing fresh windows 10 on a new hdd has horrendous loading times. I never claimed, that windows was ever as fast on hdd's as it is on sdd's. I don't know where you got that from.

[@invictus4207]

Same I just put a Samsung 990 m.2 in my 15 omen and it's light-years faster with loading and boot times now

[@GiuseppeFamiani2209]

just put ptm 7950 in 0.2mm pad form instead of paste, even the best kryo or syy 157 out there are not even close to it. Humble counsil from a laptop entusiasth that have repasted my laptops tons of time. There is nothing like it, not only is better than pastes in terms of heat, but it last much longer because does not suffer from pomp out and liquid loosing in silicon structure.

[@johnpaulbacon8320]

Great video. Maybe have a "Frame" of non-conductive paste on the edges and then fill the "frame" with liquid-metal. Just a thought.

[@epvlok1573]

What control center are you using and where can I download it?? O and a happy new year to you!!!

[@abdulmalikyakubu3045]

Those are like the phase change pads They melt at high temps and become like thermal paste then harden back when they cool down

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

Using a Lenovo Legion 7i Pro myself, with a 13900HX and RTX 4080. It comes with a vapour chamber cooler and liquid metal out of the factory and it's great. It's runs silently in 'quiet mode' with still enough horsepower to run AAA games at 60+ FPS using high/ultra settings.

[@Vityaf]

From my experience, 40 series cards in laptops are quite cool. I have an MSI laptop with 4090 and it gets maximum to 70 degrees. The CPU is the main issue. I have 13900h, on full load it gets up to 4.8 Ghz and throttles down heating up to 95 degrees. So the solution I found is in decreasing the clock speeds in bios to 4.2 Ghz and undervolting it a bit, so now my system is running at 70 degrees.

[@Mr.Morden]

0:07 Wouldn't it make more sense to have a 6 core CPU with the laptop 4080? That'd give the heat pipes more focus on the GPU where the performance is really needed.

[@rysterstech]

Those often have much lower boost speeds which hampers the gaming performance, and as far as i know you cannot get a 6 core intel mobile (or desktop) chip that is overclockable.

[@raifthemad]

Those brittle, puddy like thermal pads are quite popular with newer, more powerful and thinner laptops. Sometimes even 0.5 mm thermal pads are too thick to substitute those, keeping the plate too high off the gpu.

[@briankgarland]

Just did my XPS 15 9500 last week and it's performing like a champ.

[@ValerieNC77]

Should def try Honeywells PTM7950 pad. I did that with my laptop and it worked better than thermal paste.

[@jabezhane]

Yup seems odd seeing people still pushing paste for this. Once you go PTM 7950...thats it.

[@8eSix]

Haven't watched yet, but It will definitely make a difference on an older laptop. I did this on my old asus gaming laptop and the difference was huge

[@roki977]

it does but after 6 months or more.. doing this on new machine is pointless and with liquid metal is dangerous as well.

[@fxgamer-11yt]

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a separate cooling system for both the gpu and CPU ???

[@fazubattlecaster]

I am loving my mat. And, yes... have been doing sort of that thing with the repair parts on the mat, in the iFixIt cover.

[@albertwesker828]

I'm kind of a noob on this stuff, so I've never seen the thermal paste on VRAM trick. Well done!

[@lukev9335]

It would be awsome to see how it will run with the new KryoSheet thermal pads from Thermal Grizzly. Those pads are made in graphene and since they are electrically conductive (but won't spread as liquid metal obviously) it would be intresting how they compare against a good thermal paste like that one that you put there.

[@mattparsons946]

Just used that in my water blocks for both cpu and gpu. I’m impressed with the results so far.

[@matheusduarte6410]

I have an old gaming laptop (i5-8400H and a 1050) that i mainly use as a console for my tv to play stuff like GTA5 and rocket league. What ive noticed that changed dramatically the temperatures was limiting the cpu frequency. By default it boosts up to 4.20 GHz (which of course generates a lot of heat 90-100 degrees). What i did was locking the maximum speeds at 3.0 GHz using a program called quickcpu (there might be better programs i just know this one for now). Now i range a max 70-80 degrees with a not significant performance loss. Ive noticed that my GPU doesnt get as hot as the CPU so i didnt touched anything with it. For you in that case with a 13900HX is to lock it at 4.50 GHz and see if the temperature drops and your performance is good enough. Repasting is a good step but it only will get you so far (I still recommend you to do it every year + replacing any thermal pads and a fan cleaning!).

[@mikekuschka998]

Needed to re-paste my laptop. It all of a sudden started to thermal throttle. Used KPX on the cpu and gpu. Used corsair thermal paste on the rest of the components. No longer thermal throttling.

[@AzeroxDoomraider]

Imo its even worth it when you receive it brand new. Them seem to use bad quality to cut some cost. They dont care much if your laptop/gpu/etc becomes slower /hotter in a year. Most people dont even notice it so its no problem. I use putty (upsiren ux pro) to replace pads and tfx for cpu/gpu, imo best combo for low temps.

[@233kosta]

I recently did it on mine. MX-6 on bare die, temps down 10°C across the board. How long it'll stay that way... we'll see. I was tempted to attribute it to the old TIM not TIMing any more (there did seem to be a dry spot on one of the dies), but the last application would have been maybe a year ago (bought a refurb board, long story 😒) and this machine doesn't normally see any sort of heavy load. MX-6 just looks to be superior. Same deal on my steam deck. 10°C down across the board, and on that one there were no obvious dry spots. More importantly, there's nowuch better coupling between the die and heatsink, so there's no big jump in temperature and no throttling needed to control it.

[@cardsfanbj]

Repasting worked a miracle on my Dell G3 3500. Fans spun to 100% practically all the time with just KZbin open on Chrome with factory paste. After repasting it can still occasionally get that high at idle, but not for all that long and most of the time it's running quiet while watching videos.

[@cardsfanbj]

I did buy it used, but it was less than a year from when the laptop first launched. Factory paste was already dried out when I went to repaste.

[@dkerchner]

With my Alienware laptops I’ve always repasted, use Arctic thermal pads, and used larger power supplies. I’ve noticed when there’s 2 different wattage power bricks involved the smaller one would get fire hot and the laptop temperature would thermal throttle as well. I’ve used 2 330w and I went from thermal throttle to 70’s C in same workload situations.

[@sloth565]

I would recommend using thermal paste only for the cpu and gpu and trying out a high quality thermals pad to insulate to prevent shorting the board because that copper heatsink looks dangerous. A lot of laptops have this issue. Also please disconnect the battery before working on the system. Another to try attaching as many rasperrry pi sized aluminium heatainks onto the top of the copper heatsink for additonal passive cooling, you may need to experiement with the shorter 3mm height ones, use thermal two sided adhesive tape. K5 pro worked for me as a replacement for thernal pads, but... its messy and only recommened for use for one small component, i.e. a gpu die. Not a cluster or city of surface mounted components, due to a massive risk of of shorting.

[@geoffstrickler]

For a laptop, I like Arctic MX4 thermal paste, because it has very good conductivity, and is very durable (~8 years). Most/all of those with better thermal transfer recommend replacement in 6mo-24mo due to “thermal pump out”, which might be acceptable to some users seeking the highest performance, but is a royal pain for most laptops.

[@longbow192]

I recently repasted and re-padded my laptop, using Grizzly Kryonaut something-or-another, got the thickness of the pads right, the cooler plate made nice pressure, not too much, not too little. Against my nature, I didn't really take the time to record some before-temps. After all was said and done, I got 40-45 idle, which gave me pause, but nothing over 60 under load, and I've run some CPU-intensive games. The fans were much quieter, and the part of the housing above the radiator hasn't been abnormally hot since, so I guess I did a good job. I should probably mention the laptop is an Acer with a 7th Gen i5 performance spec CPU.

[@JamesFox1]

proof of paste working from first reboot is in the cpu temps

[@jphillips360noscope]

did a repaste on my Alienware17R4 - best thing I did honestly. Used liquidmetal and some conformal coating (just in case). Dropped temps, raised scores, lowered fan speeds... Do I recommend? As something that possibly (likely) voids the warranty, don't really recommend unless you positively, absolutely know what you're doing and what the benefits will be.

[@mkgriff1492]

That's K5 pro on the vrams. It's a paste meant to replace thermal pads.

[@TheBackyardChemist]

That was thermal putty not pads, originally. You should ask Falcon Northwest what the nominal gap that needs to be filled is, and choose a thermal pad based on that.

[@Frankenburger]

You'll probably be able to get another 5-10c drop by adjusting your volt/clock curve to undervolt your GPU. In my experience with undervolting laptops, its not uncommon to get similar if not slightly better clocks at about a 20% reduction in power consumption. It would be even better if you can undervolt the CPU, but since Intel has locked out voltage control on most of their laptop CPUs, I'm not sure that would be applicable here.

[@Frankenburger]

@@breaddough-vk8gf That is entirely incorrect. MSI laptops have hidden BIOS menus you can access by pressing Ctrl+shift+alt+f2 and opens up BIOS level undervolting. My MSI Katana can be undervolted by 80mv, dropping the CPU temps from the mid 90s under load down to the low 80s. Also, I have owned 3 gaming laptops since 2016, and none of them have ever been tuned on the GPU. Between my Asus, Gigabyte, and now my MSI Katana, I have been able to push my GPU voltage curve down to 825mv without losing any performance (technically gaining performance thanks to the clock/thermal curve) while dropping power consumption by more than 20% in all 3 instances. You underestimate the amount of time it takes to manually tune and test for stability, and cannot be done for every laptop coming off the production line.

[@Frankenburger]

@@breaddough-vk8gf You said "The reason manufacturers have started locking these things out is because they are generally tweaked before leaving the factory", which is (again) incorrect. Many laptops, including my MSI Katana, do not have unlocked CPUs. You are confusing overclocking with over/undervolting. Also, there's a huge difference between tolerances and per-chip tuning, which is something else you are confusing. Every chip regardless of their tolerances will behave differently under different voltages due to the silicon lottery. This is why some processors can be undervolted by 100mv, and some can't be undervolted at all. This is not what determines whether or not a processor is unlocked. Please read and understand what is said before attempting to contradict it.

[@Frankenburger]

@@breaddough-vk8gf Unlocked CPUs are followed by a "K" and "X" moniker. These CPUs permit user adjustable frequencies. However, you do not need an unlocked CPU to adjust voltages. With that said, I would like to rephrase my initial comment - it's not Intel that locked the voltages, it's the laptop manufacturers (at least in MSI's case). By your logic, an i5-12450H is an unlocked CPU. But this is actually incorrect. This is the same CPU that's in my MSI Katana, and as I have already stated before, I have applied an 80mv undervolt after using ctrl+shift+alt+f2 in the BIOS. This hotkey is applicable to most MSI laptops, regardless if their CPU is a K/X SKU or not.

[@Frankenburger]

@@breaddough-vk8gf It's impossible to understand what you're writing because it's absolute nonsense. Going back to your very first comment - "These things are locked because they are tuned before leaving the factory", which is a total fabrication. This is evident not only in my experience, but also further disproven due to the fact that every one of MSI's gaming laptopts can be voltage tuned regardless of CPU. You then proceed to refer to these CPUs as "unlocked", when that has always referred to clock control, not voltage control. You literally speak as if you're parroting some BS you heard online, rather than through personal experience. Not once have you ever addressed any of the points I have brought to the table, such as my results in undervolting current year laptops (probably because you know you'll dig yourself into an even deeper hole). Nor have you ever addressed why a locked CPU (such as the i5-12450H) can be voltage tuned by enabling the option in the laptop BIOS.

[@DanielRodriguez-fg5ll]

at his age, Jay looks like that cool uncle you see in thanksgiving dinner that is getting too old to be a gamer, but you still enjoy talking to him.

[@emilefragz1885]

Who decides when you have to stop doing things?

[@glebglub]

@@emilefragz1885 Mr. Arth Ritis

[@DanielRodriguez-fg5ll]

@@emilefragz1885 I would say, the question is the opposite, who/what drives people to continue way after their prime? I would say in the case of Jay is their ego. just ask yourself, if you had a teenager learning computers, would you want that kid to hang out with a mid-40s all gray head dude?

[@emilefragz1885]

@@DanielRodriguez-fg5ll Strawman

[@DanielRodriguez-fg5ll]

@@emilefragz1885 someone has to say the truth, even if it hurts. in this case, it is me. lets start the GoFundMe page for Jay to retire! wait, no! he must be making ton of money out of teenagers learning to put a computer together.

[@Jimmys_TheBestCop]

Time to test the Honeywell PTM7950 almost as good as liquid metal and completely safe for laptops or gaming handhelds. That and thermal putty. The only way to really get gaming laptops cooler is from modding. If the bottom case is aluminum you have to turn it into a gigantic heat sink then cool it. If your bottom case is plastic you need to replace it with an aluminum sheet and get it into contact with all the heat pipes using ptm7950 or thermal putty. The heat sink surface area must be significantly increased. Then you set internal fans to whatever speed doesnt make noise. Create a docking station to cool the new heat sink off with say Four 120mm thin fans or 6 depending on the size of your bottom case. That way those larger fans can cool the larger surface area while not having to work hard. Thus keeping the laptop both cool and quiet. Modern gaming laptops just generate too much heat and noise. Long gaming session you will need noise canceling headphones or go deaf and at some point the cpu and even gpu will thermal throttle. Unless your home AC and temp iz under 65 and its not 100+ degrees outside.

[@Serachja]

On my old notebook I put LiquidMetla without any safety-measures and I've been lucky, the notebook is still running and it must be almost 10 years old (I obviously don't use the notebook frequently anymore due to the low performance compared to modern Hardware)

[@OmegaBlack999]

Thermal Grizzly sells the circuit protector. I'm surprised Roman hasn't sent you any. Thanks, Jay!! Love you!!

[@richy14ca]

I think the pads you measured were the two that were over the empty memory slots

[@JoenHarlver]

u could use thermal putty it is thicker and fill perfectly fine to the height, since its like thermal paste & thermal pad (asus likes to use it & might also was used in this laptop but it looked unusually dry), also it should be fine for VRAM or VRM cooling.

[@brettweltz8135]

To replace the thermal pads on your GPU ram, I strongly recommend Fuji ploy extreme if you can find it

[@Im_bored_very_very_bored]

I never knew you could repaste a laptop great job! Jay!

[@landoblebton]

That would be some Apple MacBook stuff As if you couldnt change the thermal paste on a laptop, that would reduce its life a lot

[@jasonnemeck7351]

You can repaste any CPU or GPU. But, you have to get the quantity right and in the right places. Ryzen is different than Intel.

[@ole7736]

The KP with its low viscosity is subject to the pump-out effect more than other pastes. Requires more frequent repasting. Same with Thermal Grizzly Cryonaut, vs. let's say Hydronaut.

[@DaveSimonH]

Would be interesting to see a part 2 where you attempt to undervolt and see if that improves performance. Same clocks at lower temps, or higher clocks at same temperature.

[@vixN]

So for longevity, you should make an update video :) - I have switched to Thermal Grizzly kryosheets in my laptop, for longevity reasons, even though it is highly conductive.. it makes a huge difference!

[@GeoShifter]

You should have removed the fans and remove the dust that is in between the fan and heatsink. Usually that's the reason for bad cooling. I have been fixing laptops for over 15 years, much experience :)

[@retikulum]

Exactly. Whenever my laptop gets loud, I dust off the fans and heatsinks and they go back to normal volume.

[@1SaG]

When I was still using my laptop, and only my laptop, for gaming, I bought me one of those cooling pads. Mine is from ... er.. Enermax, IIRC. Basically just a small-(ISH), perforated steel table you put the computer on. There's a 120mm fan underneath, sucking air through the holes and creating a vacuum underneath the laptop. I didn't think it would make much of a difference, but I did manage to drop temps quite considerably with it. The laptop isn't a gaming machine, but it does have a dedicated 900 series GF in it (GF 945M I think). Only a 7200U CPU and 8 GB of DDR4 with no way of OCing cause there's no user-accessible BIOS, but it does run stuff like Civ V and even Civ VI, Crusader Kings 3 or Battletech. It just got *very* hot doing that (and load times were atrocious). With the pad, I managed to drop temps back down to "definitely warm but not paranoia-inducingly hot"-levels. Always thought these things were a bit of a scam, but I've seen temperatures drop by more than 10°C with that pad. Only drawback is that it's not what I'd call "mobile". It's a little cumbersome and quite heavy, plus there's a fan hanging underneath and some awkward USB power-passthrough cables... but it does what it claims to do.

[@chubbysumo2230]

Chances are what the thermal pads were is actually thermal putty. That would be Wyatt completely crumbles after you took it apart.

[@grandmasoffgridliving]

I used arctic .50 pads and paste on my 2016 17" predator and it's quieter and way freaking cooker than when purchased. My fans are not going full blast and I removed the secondary fan insert. Put back in the cd drive cassette. Runs like a champ and quiet! I also replaced both fans as you could hear 1 that sounded like bearings were wearing out

[@billj5645]

I've been using an old Dell business class laptop (Latitude E6500) with fast for the era dual core processor. Doing anything anywhere close to intense for extended time will max out the temps and cause severe throttling. This is under Windows 10, it ran much better with its original OS. I took it apart and cleaned a dust bunny out of its tiny cooler. Later I repasted the CPU. Maybe all of this helped but not a whole lot. 1.5 years ago I replaced the laptop with an HP Omen so I would have a decent cooling solution.

[@kjn1877]

Jay I could suggest you two solutions to solve your thermal issues and concerns. The first thing rather then using thermal pads you can use a product called k5 pro it’s the viscous thermal paste like the style you removed before attempting using thermal pad. It’s what I use daily in my profession. The second thing is to solve your concern around Liquid Metal. I am a microsolderist by trade and what I would suggest is using UV soldering mask and a UV lamp to cure I use it for repairing damaged traces when running jumper wire on PCB’s. You could cover the surrounding components you have concern about and use a UV lamp to cure it. Once it’s hard it’s protected and even if Liquid Metal gets on it nothing conducive would happen. And if you have concerns about the application you can reverse the process with heat from a hot air station to remove the soldering mask. Don’t worry the operating temperatures will not liquefy the UV soldering mask

[@RunfisherRS]

Nice laptop jay!

[@pouncytaur]

I've seen some bad results with liquid metal. many systems were equipped with it , and I found the liquid metal allows bubbles to form between the die and heatsinks, causing hot spots and lower performance.. use at own risk.

[@snarksdomain]

Looks like those aren't thermal pads on the VRAM but likely a thermal paste. I recommend using Upsiren UX Pro thermal putty instead of pads. For the core I would go with PTM7950 sheet

[@Dudae_]

When it comes to these new fangled gaming laptops I think the best bet is to just grab a fan utility and controlling them that way ;+ through any profiles built I . When I'm not gaming on mine a usually have it on the quietest setting and I've set the fans to like 1000rpm (out of a max of 4500) and that makes them barely audible and the aggregate component temperatures well below 40C

[@dezpotizmOFheaven]

For my Acer Nitro 5 is definetely did, 2 years ago. It kept overheating when it was just one year old. Monitor and keyboard shut off for a few seconds and then worked again for a few minutes just to shut off again. I put new paste and pads on and it was all fine again and is still until now.

[@faith-chess]

I recently had mine cleaned and repasted after 5 years and it lowered the CPU temperature from 99 Celsius when gaming to 85. I can definitely recommend doing after som time passed.

[@Averagedude-mi3fl]

In my opinion you shouldn’t use a lot of paste. The way I’ve understood is that if you use too much paste you essentially are insulating the chip at least on a desktop, ie increasing heat.

[@brettweltz8135]

For the best I recommend: NAB cooling NB Supermax 15w pads CX H 1300 thermal putty Honeywell PTM 7950 phase change pads Using this combination should get every ounce of heat out of your components and into the heat sinks

[@Chobbito]

I know it's a lower step but my TUFF A17 with a 4070 was running at about 83 degC the fans were at 4800rpm, and the cor would fluctuate between 2450/2200mhz. I know undervolting doesn't have the gains it did with 30 series but it actually allowed me to drop power usage by almost 20watts, temps by 5 degrees, the fans went down to about 4200rpm and because the thermals are more stable it sits at 2400mhz constantly. Well worth losing some maximum core clock to keep ot fixed as I was losing more anyway with how low it would go when fluctuating

[@manicseamonkey]

I recently re-pasted my HP Omen i7 10750h RTX 2070 laptop using Prolimatech PK3 Nano Aluminium. Before I was constantly thermal throttling and the fans were just full bore obnoxious. After everything settled down. All core boost is up, 2 cores are actually flirting with the advertised 5GHz top end. There is far less thermal throttling when stress testing, and whilst gaming all cores sit between 65-70 c on average, core 5 is considerably lower. There is the odd spike to 100 c now and then. The GPU dropped from 70 c to low 60 c and its generally a much more pleasant laptop to use. I have also used the same compound on my new i7 13700k desktop build with Noctua D15 and LGA 1700 bracket with outstanding results.