Bah, back again.
Ok so, I have a ****** 2021 A15, the top model 5800H RTX3070 with the 240hz screen.
The cooling is meh, I'll give you a rundown of where I am at so far and how the copper shims come into this, please if anyone can advise me I would be grateful. If you want to jump to the main point scroll down to caps abuse.
First I made my own crazy cooling tray, before doubters say they do nothing... this one does, it makes a big difference in fact. The chassis itself has terrible airflow, not much gets in and unless the fans spin not much gets out either and there is no fan controls via ASUS nor 3rd party because ASUS are *********. I digress, I tastefully modified the bottom to allow more air in the chassis and used a plastic screening to protect from dust and critters. I also opened up an exhaust, gas flow basics, if you want more in you have to be able to let it out or pressure will thwart your attempts.
With the tray and the mods I made massive improvements to internal temps. the last step would be a repaste with quality stuff and that would be the reworking of the thermals done or so I thought.
It is in warranty so I paid a "professional" to do it as I wanted the insurance and if I'm honest I didn't want to deal with the VRAM/VRM goop. long story short, the guy ****** up 3 different times, using the wrong pad size, not having the gear on hand, using cheap paste cause he ran out... anyway, each time the laptop came back the temps were worse than stock. Imagine my fury paying some moron to make my thermals worse and to boot, having to buy in all the stuff to do it myself anyway.
My attempts with SYY paste and K5 pro beat the "pro" with whatever paste he claims to use and god knows what thermal pads. They still don't beat stock though. I thought the heatsink may have been warped due to poor mounting and bad thermals on his part so I order a new one, yay more cost. Only to find the cold plate actually has a bit of a thin thermal pad attached to it, probably about .3 or .5mm. This was removed by the guy when he did the work. I am no wondering if that discrepancy is what is making the thermals ever so slightly worse.
HERE'S WHERE THE SHIMS COME IN, if you don't want back story.
With the random cold plate thermal pad thing removed there's a bigger gap and well laptop heatsinks don't have great clamping force anyway. So my thinking is to shim it, I hear people saying it's a gimmick, but I have also seen results. My mad scientist mind knows that having 4 surfaces will ruin the transfer anyway so I am planning on getting a lead free solder paste and actually soldering 0.5mm pads to the cold plate properly because tin has a 60w/mk rating that beats any paste and will literally remove 2 surfaces from the equation, leaving me with the shim to die contacts. That paste starts to melt at 138c, so I don't need to worry about warping if I'm careful with the hot air and I also don't have to worry about it melting under load either.
Has any one undertaken anything like this? I mean my theory is sound, I have enough K5 to bridge any gaps or I could even get thicker thermal pads and do a better job than the "pro", I can get more thermal paste for the dies. I intend on polishing the face of the shims for the dies to get a few degree bonus too.
Ok so, I have a ****** 2021 A15, the top model 5800H RTX3070 with the 240hz screen.
The cooling is meh, I'll give you a rundown of where I am at so far and how the copper shims come into this, please if anyone can advise me I would be grateful. If you want to jump to the main point scroll down to caps abuse.
First I made my own crazy cooling tray, before doubters say they do nothing... this one does, it makes a big difference in fact. The chassis itself has terrible airflow, not much gets in and unless the fans spin not much gets out either and there is no fan controls via ASUS nor 3rd party because ASUS are *********. I digress, I tastefully modified the bottom to allow more air in the chassis and used a plastic screening to protect from dust and critters. I also opened up an exhaust, gas flow basics, if you want more in you have to be able to let it out or pressure will thwart your attempts.
With the tray and the mods I made massive improvements to internal temps. the last step would be a repaste with quality stuff and that would be the reworking of the thermals done or so I thought.
It is in warranty so I paid a "professional" to do it as I wanted the insurance and if I'm honest I didn't want to deal with the VRAM/VRM goop. long story short, the guy ****** up 3 different times, using the wrong pad size, not having the gear on hand, using cheap paste cause he ran out... anyway, each time the laptop came back the temps were worse than stock. Imagine my fury paying some moron to make my thermals worse and to boot, having to buy in all the stuff to do it myself anyway.
My attempts with SYY paste and K5 pro beat the "pro" with whatever paste he claims to use and god knows what thermal pads. They still don't beat stock though. I thought the heatsink may have been warped due to poor mounting and bad thermals on his part so I order a new one, yay more cost. Only to find the cold plate actually has a bit of a thin thermal pad attached to it, probably about .3 or .5mm. This was removed by the guy when he did the work. I am no wondering if that discrepancy is what is making the thermals ever so slightly worse.
HERE'S WHERE THE SHIMS COME IN, if you don't want back story.
With the random cold plate thermal pad thing removed there's a bigger gap and well laptop heatsinks don't have great clamping force anyway. So my thinking is to shim it, I hear people saying it's a gimmick, but I have also seen results. My mad scientist mind knows that having 4 surfaces will ruin the transfer anyway so I am planning on getting a lead free solder paste and actually soldering 0.5mm pads to the cold plate properly because tin has a 60w/mk rating that beats any paste and will literally remove 2 surfaces from the equation, leaving me with the shim to die contacts. That paste starts to melt at 138c, so I don't need to worry about warping if I'm careful with the hot air and I also don't have to worry about it melting under load either.
Has any one undertaken anything like this? I mean my theory is sound, I have enough K5 to bridge any gaps or I could even get thicker thermal pads and do a better job than the "pro", I can get more thermal paste for the dies. I intend on polishing the face of the shims for the dies to get a few degree bonus too.