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!
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@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.
@DannyT thank you! Did you by any chance use more copper heatsinks on other parts? You pictures seemed to suggest that.
@5uie1, sorry for the delayed response, no, no other cooper parts, what you see in the photo is the underside of the stock fan and the NVMe heatsink
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Do you experience any lag spikes, where the game slows to a crawl for a few seconds at a time?
No, Not at all, not even once.
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.
Any recommendations for thermal pastes? Got the pump-out effect using Arctic MX-5 (and MX-4).
Maybe a more viscous one?
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.
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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.
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I’ll be honest here and state a few days ago I actually switched off boosting on my 1165G7 so it maxes at the 2.8GHz.
For what I use it for, there is zero noticeable performance difference but a big difference in fan noise and ramping up and down.
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Thanks for the heads up. I was going to ask what your 28W temperatures were like then I realised without fan speed info it has little value…
I think if the thermal system is able to deal with 60W it should make for a quieter machine with less fan ram overall.
Well locked to 2.8GHz average core temp was 70c, max watts was 18.47w and max CPU speed was 2813Mhz.
I did put boost back on and compared fan noise, and I would say a 50% reduction in noise.
Had a suspicion something wasn’t right. So I decided today to take the HSF off again and do another re-paste.
Initial pre benches were average max core temp with max boost - 93 degrees. Without boost and max 2.8GHz - 69 degrees.
I took the HSF off and the paste/core/heatsink spread didn’t look right to me. I also took the time to gently use some tweezers to position the thermal pads perfectly (they were a little askew when I got it new). I then applied another dose of Thermal Grizzly and set everything back down and tightened it all up.
Ran the bench again. With Boost max average was 85 degrees (8 degree drop) and at 2.8GHz it 68.75 degrees (I really didn’t expect much difference there).
So I’m pleased with that and it goes back to what I said that sometimes it does come down to the luck of the draw of how it all goes back together as I was using the same paste.
Oh yes and ambient was 27 degrees so not a cool room.
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I decided to move my home setup, I lost my coffee bar by doing so (not much space in my flat) but it was worth it to have a new standing desk and a little more desk space. Plus, bonus, I can use both monitors this way. Still got some cable management to deal with but what do you think? Also swapped the 6GB 1060 GPU for a 12GB 3060.
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