Is it worth re-thermal pasting your laptop? + Guide!

[Salmiakbal]

So since I was bored as hell during the holidays and because I wanted to see what the guts of my laptop look like (come on now, who doesn't) I decided to reapply the thermal paste of my laptop's CPU and GPU!

I also have temperature benchmarks from before and after the procedure.

Now my particular laptop is a real pain in the a$$ to open up completely (although it is possible to take it down entirely with just a flat head, Philips and a Torx T8). But because the heat sink assembly is under the keyboard and not under the undercover I had to remove quite a lot of stuff.

Almost every laptop is different so I suggest looking up the service manual for a guide for your particular model. My laptop had a very good manual on how to take everything apart so that wasn't a problem.

Firstly I'll list the model and the specs:

Model: HP Elitebook 8570W

CPU: Intel Core i7 3610QM 2.3 GHz

GPU: Nvidia Quadro K1000M

Harddrive: 500GB Toshiba 7200 RPM

RAM: 8GB 1600MHz

Screen: 1080x1920 Matte panel

So let's get down to business!

First things first: Once you grab a hold on a manual saying how to open up your laptop properly(like this one if you happen to have the same laptop), lay down every piece of hardware you'll probably need which in my case was a Torx T8 and a small Philips bit, a screwdriver to put the bits in, thermal paste and of course the laptop!

As you can see I have put down everything on two old blankets so nothing can get scratched.

I do apologize for my terrible camera, it's my old phone.

(this is the worst photo btw, the rest will be better)

Now the next step for me was to take off the back plate as shown here

For most laptops the heat sink assembly will be right under this panel that I have now removed. As you can probably see, with me this is not the case.

Time to remove the harddrive since there are screws underneath!

Poor Foxconn kids made this stuff.. Oh well

I should probably get an SSD in the future as well, but I think they're too expensive as of now.

DVD drive taken out in order to remove the keyboard.

And poof! Keyboard gone!

Also remember to keep all the screws together. By now I've taken out a bunch of screws and knowing where they should go can be quite a pain. Keep everything in order! It will help you later on.

For me if I'd want to change the ram I could have stopped here, but to remove the heat sink will require me to take off the entire top cover first.

And please, if you encounter any ZIF connectors (the flat ones which attach to your keyboard and power button etc.) be careful, they break easily.

And now the heatsink is in plain sight, finally! Removing the keyboard was quite a pain because it was clicked into place and you had to remove it with raw force. Had me sweating there for a sec!

Removing the heat sink is easy. Just remove the screws holding the heatsink to the motherboard (8 in this case) and remove the fan connector (which, if you look carefully, I already did in the last photo).

It might be a good plan to clean the heat sink of any dust as well. My didn't have a lot because I've only had the laptop for half a year and most of the time it's on my desk.

After the removal it should look a little bit like this:

As you can see the heat sink for the GPU has a few thermal pads for the memory. Don't remove those! They're there because the memory is probably lower than the actual GPU and the pad is needed to fill up the gap.

The thermal compound felt quite good for an OEM compound. Although it doesn't say much, the viscose felt good and it was not *too* overly much.

Now the next step is to clean the processors and the heatsink. I use eartips and toilet paper because, well, it works just fine. No need for expensive super duper cleaning solutions, it isn't rocket science people!

This is what it should look like after cleaning. The long processor is the CPU and the square one the GPU.

I also have a mighty tip (and a little anecdote) for when the old thermal compound is *really* hard to get rid of.

A few days ago I decided to take down my old xbox 360 and to reapply the thermal paste in the process. Once I got to the processors and tried to take off the old goo I was shocked to find out it was INCREDIBLY hard to take off. After 15 minutes of cleaning I said to myself: ''Well, it's just an old xbox which I hardly use. I'll just let it this way.'' So there I went, putting the thing back together with half of the paste cleaned off.

I decided to check the spreading of the thermal paste by pasting it, putting the heat sink on and taking it off again. Afterwards I cleaned off the just used thermal paste.

But to my complete delight I found out that the old thermal paste residue was also coming off! I ended up with a perfectly clean processor afterwards.

Moral? If your thermal paste is particularly difficult to take off, just put on a dot of your new one and start rubbing!

But let's get back to the task at hand. Now is the time to put on your thermal paste. Stupid as I was I forgot to take pictures of the quantity of the paste, but I'll try and describe.

For the GPU: Just a tiny drop is enough. Remember that laptop processors often don't have a integrated heat sink, making them very small. Hence a tiny drop is enough (like half a grain of rice)

For the CPU, because of the shape, I made a small line over the length of the CPU. The line was really thin, like .5mm.

If all of this is done, it's time to reassemble the heat sink! Just put it back in and remember to tighten the screws in a cross pattern (1-3-2-4). This is so that no stress gets holed up in the heat sink assembly.

Once that is done just mount everything in reverse order and you're good to go

Also, don't have a magnetic screwdriver like me? Just make one

So then comes the time to boot up the system again...

And it works! Glad nothing went wrong.

Now for the results:

-GPU-

Before new paste:

Software: FurMark v1.10.3 Burn In benchmark 1920x1080 (0xMSAA)

Idle Top temp 33 C

FurMark Top temp 65 C

FurMark + Prime95 Top temp 79 C

AMBIENT: 20C

After new paste:

Software: FurMark v1.10.3 Burn In benchmark 1920x1080 (0xMSAA)

Idle Top temp 34 C

FurMark Top temp 64 C

FurMark + Prime95 Top temp 78 C

AMBIENT: 21C

-CPU-

Before new paste:

Software: Prime95

Idle Top temp 43 C

Prime95 Top temp 85 C

Prime95 + FurMark Top temp 96 C

Throtteling:

Prime95: 2900MHz (turbo mode for 4 cores)

Prime95 + FurMark: Between 2900MHz and 2700MHz

AMBIENT: 19C

After new paste:

Software: Prime95

Idle Top temp 44 C

Prime 95 Top temp 85 C

Prime 95 + FurMark Top temp 98 C

Throtteling:

Prime95: 2900MHz (turbo mode for 4 cores)

Prime95 + FurMark: 2900MHz (turbo mode for 4 cores)

AMBIENT: 19 C

The bottom line:

The temps were mostly within the margin of error. For me changing the thermal paste wasn't much of help for the temps. Although you must know my laptop is fairly new and the paste is still fresh. If you have an old laptop, changing the paste might help! I'll also post test results of when I re thermal paste my dads old Core2Duo laptop, that's bound to make a difference in temps.

Notes:

As you can see I did tests with Prime95 and FurMark combined. I did this because the GPU and CPU heatsink are connected and thus influence each others temps.

Paste used was Arctic MX4

All tests were done on my desk, so no restricted airflow.

Temps were taken with Speccy and GPU Temp

Feel free to comment and please tell me if I've forgotten something, I'm getting quite dizzy after this much typing

Cheers!

[MartyniP]

If I had some spare time and spare thermal paste I would try this on my 3 year old laptop! It has always been rather hot, but thats the price of a 'mid-high' end gpu (3 years ago) in a laptop... Planing to get a new laptop some time soon, :)

[Dim]

Changing the thermalpaste on some, much older, CPU coolers, can improve the temperature by about 10 C. I did it on a friend's 6-year-old computer.

[JGO95]

"The temps were mostly within the margin of error. For me changing the thermal paste wasn't much of help for the temps. Although you must know my laptop is fairly new and the paste is still fresh. If you have an old laptop, changing the paste might help! I'll also post test results of when I re thermal paste my dads old Core2Duo laptop, that's bound to make a difference in temps."

Completely agree. My laptop, that has 3+ years, was overheating very much, sometimes it would shutdown just for seeing a youtube video. I changed the thermal paste and the solved the problem. When I opened it, the thermal paste was solid, so it needed to be changed. In a new computer you don't need to change. But as years go by, it is a good thing to do.

[Salmiakbal]

"The temps were mostly within the margin of error. For me changing the thermal paste wasn't much of help for the temps. Although you must know my laptop is fairly new and the paste is still fresh. If you have an old laptop, changing the paste might help! I'll also post test results of when I re thermal paste my dads old Core2Duo laptop, that's bound to make a difference in temps."

Completely agree. My laptop, that has 3+ years, was overheating very much, sometimes it would shutdown just for seeing a youtube video. I changed the thermal paste and the solved the problem. When I opened it, the thermal paste was solid, so it needed to be changed. In a new computer you don't need to change. But as years go by, it is a good thing to do.

Yes. I'm curious about my dads old laptop. It ran extremely hot last summer (touching the screws in the bottom of the laptop would burn your hands). Testing showed that temps rose up to 70C while watching a video on youtube and it shut down while doing prime95. Room temp was quite high (almost reaching 35C).

I'll do some testin' and pastin' this summer :D

[ElegantMess]

I definitely think it's worth the time to do it. I'll paste a link to a video I did on my Sony VAIO F Series laptop, and I saw a significant improvement after reapplying the thermal paste. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. Hopefully it will help someone out.

[Jonny.Wong.16]

I had a major overheating problem on my HP HDX. I replaced the thermal compound last year and it instantly solved the problem. =D

[Charlie]

Superb guide. When I cleaned out my Compaq 6710b laptop its fan and the vent had a thick cover of dust, after cleaning and applying new thermal paste I saw a temperature drop of almost 20 to 25 degree Celsius on IDLE, on load its temperature used to cross 100 degree Celsius I dont know how the CPU survived till now running so hot. This notebook used to turn off when a HD movie was playing, so yeah for me it has been worth taking apart the notebook, cleaning and applying new thermal paste, soon ill be cleaning my second Acer laptop.

I didnt take much pictures but here is one.

[Salmiakbal]

I definitely think it's worth the time to do it. I'll paste a link to a video I did on my Sony VAIO F Series laptop' date=' and I saw a significant improvement after reapplying the thermal paste. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. Hopefully it will help someone out.[/quote']

Nice, that's just like how I did it.

[MaximumUtmost]

You didn't even mention what thermal paste it is you used.  How is that supposed to help anyone?

[EmeraldKiwi]

I'll just leave this here:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Thermal-Paste-Application-Techniques-170/#SpreadResults

[EmeraldKiwi]

You didn't even mention what thermal paste it is you used. How is that supposed to help anyone?

It says Arctic MX4 in there.

[TheKDub]

replacing the thermal paste on my old laptop helped a little bit with temps, though so did cleaning the dust out of the cooler too...

[waggythegeek]

It's always worth it when your laptop comes with no thermal compound on th GPU and no screws holding the heatsink down... and you ran it that way for three years, before you were tech-savvy...

[Sklo]

Can help and is worth a try if you strugle with temps