Thermal paste getting worse?

[DreamCat04]

I just went to re-render my old gameplay recordings in a lower bitrate to save some storage. There I noticed that the CPU of my gaming laptop (linked in my profile, it's got an Intel Core i7 10750H and a GTX 1660Ti) never really went above 85°C when I had it on my laptop cooling pad. And it was drawing an average of like 55W. Now it is drawing around 35W and is close to 95°C, but hovers around the high 80s, sometimes spiking to 95°C. Is the thermal paste starting to get worse? The laptop in question is 2 years and a few days old. Would it be worth opening it, risking to break some of the plastic clips just to repaste it to get back the full performance? Its warranty period is also over now so I woulnd't void it by doing it

Kind regards

DreamCat04

(also I don't know what forum this belongs into, so feel free to move it if it's in the wrong spot)

Edit: I looked at the videos again and focused on temps and power consumption. GPU was always at around 80W while being at around 80°C. The CPU was at around 80°C too with 55W average and at some point went up to 65W and the temp only went up to 85°C. If I start a prime95 stress test, it goes up to 105W but then throttles down to 75W at 3.4Ghz

[GOTSpectrum]

Dust... probably more likely to be dust, those very dense fins love to gum up with dust 

 

but could also be the thermal paste 

[DreamCat04]

5 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

Dust... probably more likely to be dust, those very dense fins love to gum up with dust 

 

but could also be the thermal paste 

Actually after that run of prime95, the coldest core was at just 79°C while the hottest reached 97°C. But that specific core has always been the coldest core, I feel like the gap between the max temp of the hottest core and the max temp of the coldest core has increased. Maybe also a mount issue or something because the two hot cores are in one corner and the cold core in another. I feel like it's too specific to be silicon-lottery based that the temperature variations are like they are. The GPU is perfectly fine, even when it is at 87°C, the hotspot barely reaches 100°C while in my desktop the 2060 can be at 80°C and the hotspot is at 97°C

[GOTSpectrum]

12 minutes ago, DreamCat04 said:

Actually after that run of prime95, the coldest core was at just 79°C while the hottest reached 97°C. But that specific core has always been the coldest core, I feel like the gap between the max temp of the hottest core and the max temp of the coldest core has increased. Maybe also a mount issue or something because the two hot cores are in one corner and the cold core in another. I feel like it's too specific to be silicon-lottery based that the temperature variations are like they are. The GPU is perfectly fine, even when it is at 87°C, the hotspot barely reaches 100°C while in my desktop the 2060 can be at 80°C and the hotspot is at 97°C

it's unusual for you to suddenly get mount issues unless they have always been there, laptops are usually thread locked up the wazoo, but I don't see any harm in re pasting, remounting and cleaning any dust. It certainly can't make it much worse 

[SleepDeprivationTheITGuy]

People have said that your specific laptop, the Strix G17, can have improvements of over 10°C when Thermal Grizzly liquid metal as opposed to stock paste (I found this with a quick Google). Cleaning out dust as well as using higher quality paste may help you achieve better temperatures.

[DreamCat04]

1 hour ago, SleepDeprivationTheITGuy said:

People have said that your specific laptop, the Strix G17, can have improvements of over 10°C when Thermal Grizzly liquid metal as opposed to stock paste (I found this with a quick Google). Cleaning out dust as well as using higher quality paste may help you achieve better temperatures.

Oddly enough, ASUS says on their homepage about this laptop that it has liquid metal applied. Does this only affect their top-tier model or was I looking at the 2021 model perhaps? Is this cooler nickel plated at the bottom or not? I'd like to repaste it as few times as possible and it's said that after a year or two, the liquid metal will have absorbed into the copper if the cooler base is uncoated copper. What would be a good thermal paste? Also do you have to replace the thermal pads when re-mounting the cooler? Or do the normal ones "unsquish" so that they can be re-used without any issues?

[DreamCat04]

@GOTSpectrumI just did a benchmark battle in Fortnite at 1600x900 where I usually play at and the GPU was at its 87°C target while being at ~70W avg but it wasn't at 100% load and the CPU averaged around 40-50W, so still 5-10W lower than it once was and it was at 95°C pretty often

Edit: I also tested Raft for around 10 minutes, I'll attach a screenshot of the power/temp situation below and also of Afterburner

Edited November 17, 2022 by DreamCat04
Added one more game for refernece

[RealBACONATOR2]

First things first, clean your laptop. Laptop fans accumulate dust over time, and this can lead to a lot hotter temps. Take a can of compressed air, hold your fan blades stationary (do not let them get spun by the air) and blow air to clear dust. You may be surprised by how much dust accumulates in your fans!

 

Then think about air flow, can the laptop get cold air?

 

Thermal paste is I think a last ditch option, and the least likely to be responsible for your unexpectedly hot temps.

[DreamCat04]

On 11/18/2022 at 3:45 PM, RealBACONATOR2 said:

First things first, clean your laptop. Laptop fans accumulate dust over time, and this can lead to a lot hotter temps. Take a can of compressed air, hold your fan blades stationary (do not let them get spun by the air) and blow air to clear dust. You may be surprised by how much dust accumulates in your fans!

Okay. I'll do that the next time I have some spare time! I'll maybe update you on my results.

 

On 11/18/2022 at 3:45 PM, RealBACONATOR2 said:

Then think about air flow, can the laptop get cold air?

Yes, I always have a cooling pad with 2 (loud) fans below it

 

On 11/18/2022 at 3:45 PM, RealBACONATOR2 said:

Thermal paste is I think a last ditch option, and the least likely to be responsible for your unexpectedly hot temps.

Okay. But I saw a video of Dawid does Tech stuff where he cleaned and re-pasted his 2 year old dell XPS 15 (the vid itself is from 2020 I think) and he got 20°C less CPU temp and had it not throttle down after a few minutes anymore. But I'll definetely try cleaning my fans & heatsinks and then I'll see how much better my temps get!

[RealBACONATOR2]

12 hours ago, DreamCat04 said:

Okay. I'll do that the next time I have some spare time! I'll maybe update you on my results.

 

Yes, I always have a cooling pad with 2 (loud) fans below it

 

Okay. But I saw a video of Dawid does Tech stuff where he cleaned and re-pasted his 2 year old dell XPS 15 (the vid itself is from 2020 I think) and he got 20°C less CPU temp and had it not throttle down after a few minutes anymore. But I'll definetely try cleaning my fans & heatsinks and then I'll see how much better my temps get!

Yeah, do a good clean first, do the easy things first! it will likely help quite a bit

[DreamCat04]

6 hours ago, RealBACONATOR2 said:

Yeah, do a good clean first, do the easy things first! it will likely help quite a bit

Yeah. I also just noticed some dust in the USB ports lol. I guess that is because if I have it sitting on the table, I was able to notice some air being sucked in through the USB ports. So getting it dust-free might help. I also think that I can notice less air coming through the GPU fan than I was once able to feel, but it might just be that the GPU fan pushes the same amount of air through 2 fin stacks than the CPU does through just one fin stack... I don't know  when I have the time to "dedust" it but I'll see, maybe I'll DM you with my results or maybe I'll post it here

[DreamCat04]

11 hours ago, RealBACONATOR2 said:

Yeah, do a good clean first, do the easy things first! it will likely help quite a bit

Yes, it did. Temps stayed around the same but I got an extra ~15W on the CPU, the GPU was already on its power limit, so no improvement there... These fans were REALLY dusty, no wonder they weren't performing as good as they once were

[DreamCat04]

I also repasted it about a month after my last message and it improved the temps by a LOT. There was a "dry" spot in the LM that I could get rid of and after re-spreading the LM and taking the crusty paste off the GPU, it ran like it once did in 2021. It still runs great by the way. I did one more dust cleaning last year but there wasn't too much dust. I hadn't used it that much and when I used it, it was in pretty clean environments