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Here's a stupid idea: Using an IC graphite pad as heatspreader

Napper198

So I'm currently researching to buy a gaming laptop and basically all of them suck at thermal performance and for most models it is advised to use liquid metal as TIM.

While looking at some videos YouTube suggested Linus' video of the IC Graphite Thermal Pad and I ended up watching it again. Something that cough my attention was, that these pads are apparently better at spreading heat in X and Y than they are in Z.

 

So, how about this: line the exposed PCB around the CPU/GPU die with non-conductive thermal pads the thickness of the die height and then put a graphite pad on top of the entire CPU/GPU in order to increase the surface area the cooler touches. See illustration below

 

Spoiler

40UIGUj.jpg

Has anyone tried this before? I'm willing to test this myself however it'll take me some time before I can get to it.

Any other thoughts than this being a terrible idea that no one should do?

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Bad idea

Desktop specs:

Spoiler

AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB Gigabyte B550M DS3H mATX

Asrock Challenger Pro OC Radeon RX 6700 XT Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (8Gx2) 3600MHz CL18 Kingston NV2 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD

Montech Century 850W Gold Tecware Nexus Air (Black) ATX Mid Tower

Laptop: Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 16ACH6

Phone: Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro 8+128

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Any additional stuff between a chip and heatsink adds thermal resistance, slows transfer.

 

If you add a sheet of that material, you're increasing the thermal resistance in the area that the original heatsink covered (and its thermal paste), so making it worse, but you're slightly enlarging the heat transfer area ... with the mention that the heat transfer from the cpu to the newly gained surface area is weaker than the heat transfer directly between cpu and heatsink through the paste.

Also the heat produced by the cpu is so big that it quickly spreads throughout the heatsink, so the added graphite material won't do much

 

Let me make a picture for you

 

crap.png.143dc40e970910814d8c24ec56e41127.png

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12 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Any additional stuff between a chip and heatsink adds thermal resistance, slows transfer.

 

If you add a sheet of that material, you're increasing the thermal resistance in the area that the original heatsink covered (and its thermal paste), so making it worse, but you're slightly enlarging the heat transfer area ... with the mention that the heat transfer from the cpu to the newly gained surface area is weaker than the heat transfer directly between cpu and heatsink through the paste.

Also the heat produced by the cpu is so big that it quickly spreads throughout the heatsink, so the added graphite material won't do much

 

Let me make a picture for you

 

crap.png.143dc40e970910814d8c24ec56e41127.png

the idea was that the thermal pad would be used as TIM as well since that is what it's originally designed for, but like you pointed out the gained surface area might not be able to transfer much heat in the first place and even if most laptop coolers are optimized for specific die area anyway. 

12 minutes ago, James Evens said:

 

What happend? this is the second or third pgs thread poping up today

This is about what I had in mind, thanks.

I blame YouTube for spamming Linus' video

Did you know this forum has an unofficial/official Star Citizen group? Head over to our organization's page, numerous forum threads or our LTTC Discord Server to find out more.

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Don't bother with that or liquid metal imo. Decent thermal paste should do finem if you need liquid metal to make the laptop function as it should then it's a badly designed laptop.

That's an F in the profile pic

 

 

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