I know, if you read back a little, you see in FW16 case, it is the heatsink/heatpipe that’s being flattened.
I’m just saying I’m no stranger to the process.
I realize we are talking about AMD procs here. But on the newer Intel chips with Performance and Efficientcy cores, would you ‘expect’ there to be a thermal/speed difference between the cores running the same tests?
@taezea I wonder if this is because of the thermal transfer between the main board and the chassis. By adding the thermal pad the chassis acts like a big heatsink.
There are a couple of things that we should consider when doing this, but, I may be wrong.
- We should make sure that we won’t add extra heat to different components under the mainboard. Mainly because we’re moving heat away from the CPU.
- We need to make sure that the thermal pad isn’t too thick as we could add some extra stress on the mainboard and it could be a risk of damaging it. Also, I think that the thermal pad should be a bit wider in order to avoid adding a stress point.
For the second point, I’d say that we may need to calculate the thermal pad thickness by checking the distance between the chassis and mainboard and getting one that’s thicker by 0.10/0.15mm.
Re:
Not enough pressure or, not enough liquid metal.
I wish someone from the framework team could confirm that if we have the right thermal pad we can in fact use the chassis to improve the thermal transfer from the mainboard.
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When you test the new thermal pads, can you please take some photos with the mainboard?
I want to see what we have under the CPU.
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I totally agree with you points, I cannot confirm or deny anything yet as I’m still in the collecting data and testing phase for any conclusions.
I doubt much heat transfer would take place from the small piece I used. I will do more extensive testing when I get the larger pads in and feel/touch with and without modifications.
At the moment there’s basically a very good insulator between the mainboard and the underside of the body. And that is the air pocket between it. (in the original configuration)
The main purpose for the padding would be to counter the top pressure from the top plate and keyboard and force a squeeze type of force on the mainboard and heatsink/heatpipe.
The type of padding I ordered is designed to squeeze in ~25% of it’s original thickness. It is very soft and designed for electrical components, I’m not to worried about the stress involved as it’s flat surface stacked on flat surface on flat surface with space to squeeze out of sides of the pressure, as long it’s not too thick it’s shouldn’t be more than the same type of stress of you pushing on the keyboard pushing towards the top plate, it’s probably even less.
I think pictures here would explain more than anything I type so that’s next.
When remove the mainboard again to measure and install the padding I will shoot some pics. @Alex_Uta
I cannot comment yet on if there’s enough liquid metal used or not, I wont open and remove the heatsink/heatpipe until I also have a replacement ready to go. I can tinker for a few days but I need a working laptop after that.
The mounting pressure is just the working theory that I’m going to work on to prove or disprove.
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I’ll be watching this thread carefully for the foreseeable future. I already had my board replaced and, despite CBR23 scores initially being within the target range, they had already dropped over 10% within a month. I shared the numbers and such right here:
I spoke to Framework Support again and now they’re asking me to send the entire laptop in, which is honestly irritating. I’m fortunate enough that not having the laptop on hand for some time won’t be affecting my college work or anything like that, but not every one can afford to have their laptop out of commission for who knows how long. I’d much rather keep having my Mainboard replaced every once in a while until the problem is finally addressed rather than having to send in the entire unit with the caveat that the problem might still not be fixed after that.
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What would be the reason to take the whole laptop in, would they be checking if the body or top plate is warped or something like that? Something wrong with tolerances of the screw towers?
That’s really wild.
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I’m honestly not sure. Frankly, I don’t see how it could be an issue with any of the other components when the board worked fine upon arrival. So unless there’s something that’s slowly warping the mainboard or the heatsink assembly over time, the only potential culprits are the board itself or the heatsink.
I’m pretty damn sure the deck isn’t warped. However, I will say that I have observed that the body has a slight bend depth-wise. That may have something to do with it.
I installed some padding. I used TP-3 Arctic 1.5mm height.
I used a piece of paper and a pencil to make a mask to use for the padding and cut it to size.
Then I made a opening for the stud so the padding doesn’t stack with the stud putting uneven stress on the CPU area. Note the dot near the middle.
The mainboard has black studs supporting it. So it is screwed in with the 6 screws but also supported by the black studs all over the bottom of the mainboard.
This means that normally there’s a area that only has air which is a good insulator if it’s not moving. It must be around 1.5mm.
I don’t have calipers at hand to measure the studs, so if anyone else has a chance to measure them that would be great info. (The height)
The 1.5mm padding doesn’t seem to interfere with the installation of the mainboard back in it’s normal placement. The material property allows for it to squeeze in by design,
I will make some runs with CB R23.
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i am really excited for your Results. After i loosened all 6 of my Mainboard Screws as you did. and just gently tightening them to when they just start to stop. I got reduced my “Spike” during Boot and its staying silent when in Desktop. And i am hitting more stable High 15ks in CBR23. Funny Think the “Temp” Delta increased again, but it didn’t hurt Performance.
I Get 63W pulled from the CPU in the Start of a BenchRun falling to 51W over the 10min Cycle.
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I tried that screw loosening trick, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. Needless to say, seeing 37W max, 34W sustained is very concerning.
Edit: I also tried tweaking the tension on the heatsink retention screws, and now the core-to-core delta is more than 20°C (with Core1 now being the coolest core at 79.8°C max and Core4 hitting 100°C)
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Thanks for testing, well thats really bad, to see that this happened after a Mainboard Replacement. Did you try, removing it fully and reseating? Maybe there happened a Fault during Install? (Well possibly unlike as it worked fine for some weeks)
Just for Info, i also as mentioned before i redid my GPU with my “possible” Fake PTM7950 and my GPU Temps are really great. (Stats in the Top)
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Thanks for doing all this work.
Do you have photos of the thermal pad applied?
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I’ll give Mainboard removal and reinstall a shot, sure. I see no harm in doing so.
As an aside, I have noticed something a bit strange about the lower chassis and I wanted to get y’all’s opinions on this. Upon looking closely at the edges, it seems like the enclosure curves slightly upwards at the corners. I took some pictures to illustrate:
If you notice, you can see the keys on the keyboard and some light shine through the bend in the center of the chassis. I used the edge of my portable monitor (which is perfectly flat) to make sure it was properly visible in the pictures.
The same thing happens at the opposite side of the chassis, as well as the front edge. I wonder if this could have to do with the decaying thermals.
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I have not looked into the dGPU yet, does it also have LM or something else?
Did you have thermals measured before you changed it out, did you see any difference?
I’m still in the process of testing. Did a couple of runs with the pads and later today will remove it again to get some sort of baseline.
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The dGPU has normal Thermal Paste. It went down by 4-5C under full Load. When i set the Thermal Limit of my CPU to 65C during Gaming with Universal X86 Tuning Utility the Framework is pretty impressive how Silent it can be. BTW when Gaming the CPU only spikes to 35-40w (mostly below 30w) but for everyone affected by the Heattransfer Problem Thats Turbinesauna Territory.
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As to your bending. I inspected mine and its hard to compare to yours. I aimed down the straight edge and i couldn’t notice any bending in the Bottom Case. My Screen is a little flexed, but not the Lower Casing. Sorry bad Focus 
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Eventually you guys could setup a “script-set” so people can replicate the exact tests you did.
This would enable a decent comparison table. We could indirectly also identify bad setup with that?
Note: We’ll need to take into account Windows and Linux OS.
You can just do a Cinebench R23 Run in Linux or in Windows, they do not defer that much. With Monitoring Tools in Linux i got less Points then in Windows. But a good Rule of Thumb is: If you hare in High Performance Mode in Linux or Windows and you are below 15k Points in CB R23 you have very likely a Throttling Issue.
Tested with Nobara 40
There were 3 scenario’s I tested.
One with only the thermal pads beneath the core.
One with thermal pads beneath the core and on top of the heat-pipes, below the top plate.
And completely stock.
After running multiple tests and reviewing the scores, i cannot say I see any significant increase or decrease in performance running the benchmark.
I see better results on a cold start (no heat soak present in the system)
I see slightly better thermals on the over al lows with the pads installed, which makes sense as there’s more surface area to dissipate heat too that is outside of the laptop body.
Having both the pads beneath and at the top also disproves the theory that it might be an issue with the mounting pressure, as with this config the cpu and heatsink/heat-pipes are basically sandwiched, with both bottom and top pressure (not a lot, but if it matter I would see some differences).
So for conclusions, please note, only 1 system was tested;
You can use this type of padding to slow the rate of system heat soaking, but I don’t see much benefit from it.
Mounting pressure seems not to be the issue.
Cause for the uneven thermals still to be determined.
side note, on a cold start I have seen it pull as high as 79 corwatt and all cores average hit ~4400mhz on full load. I have the R9.
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