Maximum Cooling! Upgrade Steam Deck to PTM 7950

[@MioMate187]

Thanks for the god tutorial. It was my first change of thermal paste since my training as an it specialist 15 years ago. Because I didn't listen exactly I hardcore cleaned the silver chips on the frame around because they were full of thermal paste, and I was wondering as I saw they don't get covered by the thermal pad 😮. But everything works extremely fine, I additionaly replaced the back shell with the vent version of jsaux. The deck now is 99% silent no matter what I play. For example 3h Armored core 6, docked highest preset s with some tunings locked 40fps. The Gpu is at its limit 98% most of the time, temps are 77° and fan is absolutely ❤

[@uss_liberty_incident]

Solid tutorial. Completely disregarded it and just watched your video on your thermal results, but this is a lifesaver for anyone who doesn't know how to take apart electronics. Commenting so more people see this.

[@califpv]

Been using 91% iso on all my PC builds for 15+ years. Skip the headache of having to purchase it online, because no stores carry 99%. Great video 👍🏼

[@Rickatsu]

THANK YOU SO MUCH, you made this so much easier to do. I followed every step as you went and pretty much finished at the same time. Much better temps!!!

[@pablieto-veganson]

did it improve battery life, or slightly increase performance?

[@Rickatsu]

@@pablieto-veganson helped temp lower

[@joejjeman]

also did this upgrade... what a difference in noise! also undervolted

[@victortrujillo2591]

Best video on how to install thermal pad !! Thanks for such a detailed and well documented video !!

[@SolarianN2]

Careful when plugging the battery back in. Mine decided to power on when I did and I didn't notice. Went to put the metal plate back in and sparked the board. Ended up killing my LED and sound indicator for booting. Lucked out as it still fully functions normally besides that.

[@MatthewBarbourSMJ]

Thanks for the vid, followed this vid and my deck is definitively cooler.

[@baldsealion]

Fantastic! I am loving it, totally worth it. I will be posting a benchmark comparison video soon. There are definite gains.

[@pablieto-veganson]

Thanks so much for making this tutorial man! ✅🙏🏻 Btw, how thick is the ptm material? It seems to be a big deal how thick the pad is.

[@GREATVOVA]

Applied arctic mx-6 and get some decent results. -1 degree C and -300 rpm under heavy load of Metro Exodus. Still worth it since mine SD is overclocked.

[@FelMaBo]

and the results? numbers? temperatures after and before ?

[@baldsealion]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/labdY6Rme96YasU

[@Nyamiou]

Very well made guide.

[@baldsealion]

Thank you very much !

[@danonino2003]

Thank you for measuring

[@muhammadshahir7657]

how many thickness for thermal pad you use? 0.5mm? 1mm?

[@risingrevolt541]

I just repasted with the PTM 7950 on my deck and I'm noticing that the temps are noticeably higher than before, in fact the fan ramps up to 7000 RPM more than with the stock paste. Should I reapply it immediately or I should I wait for a few heat cycles to pass?

[@Squallrain88]

Best manual ! 👍

[@baldsealion]

Thanks so much!

[@ziom00ziom]

Hey, what about switch off the battery from bios before disassembly?

[@baldsealion]

Uhg, definitely yes. Looks like I failed to add that here. Shame on me.

[@The_SUN1234]

@@baldsealion Add it in the description.

[@baldsealion]

@@The_SUN1234 Thanks for the suggestion! It's been both added as a video to the description and a separate info card at 1:25 in the video itself. Hopefully this helps.

[@jdott8232]

Is there a benefit to doubling up the pads. Like cutting it to the right size but place one on top of another?

[@danconwell4842]

no, the paste or pad's purpose is to provide maximum surface contact area and maximum thermal conductivity, the thicker the material - the slower heat will move through it.. however if you go too thin, you may reduce contact (its really sat on a couple of high points with lower pressure or air gaps elsewhere). Its a tricky balance between being as thin as possible, as conductive as possible - but all while maintaining maximum surface contact.

[@roullig]

13:29 What's the size of the pad you bought? Is it 40x80? I'm trying to find out if 40x40 would be enough to cover a GPU die.

[@IMIute]

🔥

[@MiloTheBakery]

This paste completely fried my SD card and gave me an black screen of death which i can't fix. I opened the deck again and checked the thermal paste of this plate again and it was completely dry and everything was on the side. Used normal thermal paste but the black screen of death was still there. After like having the deck on for min, everything would go black. Had to buy a complete new deck... would never try it again lol.

[@Meninem_]

My deck either died due to it coming faulty (RMA replacement for launch model) or the PTM7950 might've killed one of the tiny golden capacitors. The stuff works great on my desktop but on the steam deck, I'm worried that when it turns into a liquid, its destroying the APU capacitors due to heat. Also, when you opened the deck up, the PTM being a dry solid is normal, I saw the same thing in my unit. I think this mod is fine but too much PTM is being applied which causes it to overflow onto the rest of the APU. I should probably check my desktop cpu but the temps are almost away sub 40c on a Ryzen 9 5900x so I'm not gonna worry to much rn. RMA was a pain in the ass since support refused to believe that the deck after being shortly used. It could be a combination of things, my RMA unit came faulty with a muffled boot chime and super strong haptics to were anyone in the room could hear the motors struggle but the PTM might've also helped it die. Edit: Unfortunate that there isn't more information about this online. Logically though, too much thermal paste could yeild the same hypothetical result if it heat transfers to the capacitors. I don't think anyone would wanna test that theory though and if it has happened to someone, they wouldnt speak up or they don't have a good platform to raise concern. My factory thermal paste was annoying to clean up since a majority of it spilled onto the green part of the APU rather than covering it.

[@MiloTheBakery]

@@Meninem_ thanks for your informative response. As I want to be clear about the PTM being dry, I meant that the paste was litterally not on the APU anymore. It could’ve been because i pressed somewhat lightly harder on the heatsink or something, but everything was on the side and there was like nothing left on the APU.. With that being said i also placed the PTM on my CPU and GPU of my gaming laptop and have no problems with that. A 3070ti working completely fine, but i litterally think it killed my SD because of everything being on the side instead of on the APU, and that the APU and SD card just got too hot the first 2 min I turned on the SD. With that resulting in giving me black screens forever.. Honestly sold it as broken and bought a new one 64GB, installed a 1TB SSD and thats all i’m going to change on the steam deck as of the internal stuff. And again i’m never using a PTM again. I see more and more comments of people having issues like, it only caused their steam deck to get only hotter after installing the PTM.

[@SergioNayar]

@@Meninem_ Supposedly this pad is non conductive, even when it turns to liquid.

[@X862go]

you can freeze it first

[@crregazzamerone]

Temps?

[@baldsealion]

They’re in the video that followed

[@ForeverHollowed]

Followed your instructions now my steam deck won't turn on. I guess I will just crawl in a hole and die

[@XxfieryfirexX]

I thought those were condoms

[@squiddymute]

i gues this guide killed my deck, i get black screen and fan only, you should probably put your deck in batter storage mode before disconnecting the battery

[@califpv]

Yes, drop the battery below 20% and battery storage mode before battery disconnect. anytime your taking apart your deck you need to do this to avoid any accidental shorts. There are capacitors that store small amounts of energy and this assures that they are out of the equation when working on your deck.

[@IghorMaia]

Stop using windows

[@baldsealion]

No 😊

[@sithcdw]

Why tf would he do that? 😂