is thermal paste on the bottom of thermal pad ok?

darknite · 15 Mar 2013 at 10:22

Pretty much the title. Will this be ok? The thermal pad looks at least 2mm thick! Since removing the laptop heatsink/cooling arm i don't think this sits on the chipset correctly. Causing graphical errors. Will this cool ok?

Cheers
Dark

Armageus · 15 Mar 2013 at 10:33

darknite said:
Pretty much the title. Will this be ok? The thermal pad looks at least 2mm thick! Since removing the laptop heatsink/cooling arm i don't think this sits on the chipset correctly. Causing graphical errors. Will this cool ok?

Cheers
Dark

I would avoid doing this - the whole point of the thermal pad is to do the same job as the paste i.e. to fill the void between chip and heatsink, adding another dissimilar material will likely make matters worse.

Ideally you want to replace it with something similar, but other than the liquid metal pads (which I wouldn't particularly recommend), OcUK do not stock anything.

darknite · 15 Mar 2013 at 10:37

I purchased some liquid metal pads, they arrive today. Why wouldn't you recommend them? I also purcahsed extra artic silver to test the seating of it anyway. But I think the space is too big.

Armageus · 15 Mar 2013 at 10:44

darknite said:
I purchased some liquid metal pads, they arrive today. Why wouldn't you recommend them? I also purcahsed extra artic silver to test the seating of it anyway. But I think the space is too big.

To be fair I have not had any personal experience with the liquid metal products - but there have been many scare stories regarding the other liquid metal products. The pads in particular seem to require a great deal of heat to get them to melt and work correctly - and when they do they are very difficult if they need to be removed.

darknite · 15 Mar 2013 at 10:47

Great. Here's hoping I am wrong about the gap then! I didn't remove the old thermal pad, I think the problem is since removing it no longer gets 100% seal on the chip. Hense i thought a bit of artic silver on it would solve the issue.

greenbrucelee · 15 Mar 2013 at 15:50

If you put paste on a thermal pad it will have the same result as putting too much paste on which is that heat will not be transferred to the heatsink and dissapated out of the case it will be insulated ontop of the cpu which as you can guess is a bad thing.

If you want to remove the pad properly and apply your own paste use arti clean 1 & 2 or get some 90% isopropyl alcohol and use a lint free cloth or some coffee filters to wipe the cpu and heatsink with.

Armageus · 15 Mar 2013 at 16:38

greenbrucelee said:
If you want to remove the pad properly and apply your own paste

The issue is, as with most laptops the use of thermal pads which tend to be 2 or 3mm in height - applying thermal paste will not fill that void.

BluD · 15 Mar 2013 at 19:01

I've used as5 on my thermal pads plenty of times and not seen any bad side to it , one of my water coolers I fitted recently recommended using thermal paste on the pads. Maybe it depends on what each pad is made of I don't know.

MHK · 15 Jun 2013 at 18:24

Slightly out of topic, I'm about to take apart my hp dv7-6b51ea, my problem is that I can not find the thickness of the thermal pads used in said laptop. Has anyone got any advice for me on this issue? I do not want to take it apart before I get my hands on all the parts needed in the process as this would mean that I'll be stuck without a computer for quite some time.

greenbrucelee · 16 Jun 2013 at 13:23

As far as I know all cpu thermal pads are the same thickness just that you can get different sizes.

MHK · 16 Jun 2013 at 17:14

I believe the ones I need are applied to the gpu, I have found thermal pads to range from 0.5 to 2.0 mil in thickness and that is what throws me off.

MHK · 27 Jun 2013 at 01:24

Took the bloody thing apart, ended up using a copper shiv 1mm thick and some arctic silver. Made the thing so cold it will not post temperature readings until it warms up to above 35c. Massive improvement over the stock **** that was there before.