Well the CPU temps haven’t really changed at all (like maybe 1 degree colder), the thermal paste it was shipped with seems fine…
…However, when gaming for a while in Cyberpunk the temps used to bounce a lot between 100 and 80… that no longer happens… highest temp I have seen on the CPUs while gaming was 83 and it jumps back to 79 easy enough…
… keep in mind that might not have anything to do with the thermal paste (there was a recent bios update)… but I noticed the change after doing the paste soooooo? your guess is as good as mine.
Few more hours of playing Cyberpunk, even my roommates and gaming on their rigs so the ambient room temperature has definitely increased… but looks like the laptop is staying stable!
@DannyT Thank you for doing this and posting the results. And apologies for resurrecting an old thread. I was trying to find the links to the copper heatsink that you refer to in your post, but am unable to find them on the forums. Could you please share the links?
I re-did my paste with Cryonaut a week or so ago. Didn’t really get any major change better or worse. The stuff they use works pretty well. There is no great need to change it.
These chips run hot no matter what you do. Nature of the beast.
That’s awesome! I’ve had nothing but issues on mine. I’ve replaced the paste with MX-5, MX-4, replaced the mainboard a couple times, and it still randomly stutters to a few frames per second in any demanding games.
Interestingly, every time the old paste had dried out at the very center of the die; I’m going to try a thermal pad next, maybe that’ll help…
Thermal compound should not be drying out like that, and there shouldn’t be that hard stutter going on.
Few thoughts, maybe try a higher end paste like Thermal grizzly, and if you’re replacing the thermal pads, again aim higher, a thermal pad on the CPU is not going to get you where you wanna be.
As far as software, I’d take some time there to make sure the ducks are all in a row. Like, turning off the panel self refresh (PSR), and making sure that the power profiles/options are in order.
Edit: I now realize that MX-5 ‘is’ the upgrade to MX-4, Here I thought you were using the old school Artic silver, which ‘was’ king for a while, but pastes have gotten a bit better since then. Still not sure they should be drying out though so soon.
I tried that and made next to no difference over the stock stuff. I would say to anyone thinking of trying paste swap to just not bother. The stock paste is good.
I do wonder however, that maybe newer Intel mobile chips just vary up and down so much in heat so quickly that some pastes maybe just can’t keep up with the constant boosts to really high temps and do in fact degrade far quicker than they would with say desktop chips.
Who knows. I get a lot of laptops in and all the Intel 9th gen onwards stuff just sounds like a hairdryer all the time. But if folks are easily led enough to only want super slim machines…
I’ll have to disagree. From a temperature standpoint, yeah perhaps, though with these newer intel chips, I’m wondering if the addition of any additional thermal headroom just results in the chips clocking up higher. I just made the swap myself, The thermal pads, and the paste, and saw a decent bump in performance in games, making some of them much more playable.
But to your point, the stock paste is a lot better than the standard mass production stuff that ships with most laptops. I just had some lying around, and wanted to give it a shot.
Remember less is more with thermal paste. It’s only meant to fill in the tiny microscopic imperfections between die and heatsink. So actually seeing little paste (almost a haze of paste) between the two actually means really good contact and the minimum of paste. You don’t want like a sandwich filling layer of paste between the two.
The reason I think a lot of folks get a little disappointed with their paste change results is that the standard stuff is as good as anything else you can put in without spending silly money. Also sometimes you just get lucky with how you put it back with just the right tension etc. etc.
Linked below is a post from a user who has learnt of a thermal putty/pad which has been claimed to be comparable to liquid metal with non of the downsides. In a few weeks they will receive them to try out.
I had never heard of Shin-Etsu before but looking them up they seem to be as good or better than the well know competition.
