Tips (and thermal paste) to cool down a laptop.

[L0n3gr3yw0lf]

Hello, I will upgrade my Asus ZenBook Pro Duo UX581 laptop with a motherboard with i9 9980HK, RTX 2060 and 32GB DDR4 2466 MHz (from i7 9750H, RTX 2060 and 16 GB DDR4 2466 MHz) and doing it myself I would like to do everything I can to cool down and improve the laptop.

The i9 9980HK has the same 54W max TDP as the i7 but is more densely packed with the 2 extra cores and want to try and keep it as cool or better to get a little longer max Turbo and more consistent 5 GHz single and dual thread workloads.

The GPU stays consistently cooler because its the underclock version with 85W TDP hardware limit (no OC software I tried has managed to get it to run faster), it's typically at 65 C at 100% usage.

 

Any thermal paste you can recommend that can get even a few C lower? I'm not going to try liquid metal because of the nature of being a laptop and it won't always stay horizontally oriented.

 

I had looked into the 2nd gen Asus ZenBook Pro Duo which came out with the 10th gen, better GPU and 2x M.2 slots instead of just one, but has identical exterior. Unfortunately Asus changed motherboard layout by the tinniest amount and it won't fit in my 1st gen.

I will scrub down and clean the heatsinks and fans until they are sparkling.

[bezza...]

dont use liquid metal. not worth the risk. also if the gpu is at 65 degrees under load (which is great for a laptpo) you are fine and have no need to do anything. cooling it more will not give u more performance

[L0n3gr3yw0lf]

1 hour ago, bezza... said:

dont use liquid metal. not worth the risk. also if the gpu is at 65 degrees under load (which is great for a laptpo) you are fine and have no need to do anything. cooling it more will not give u more performance

I was interested in tips and thermal paste advi e for the CPU, that one has a tendency to thermal throttle, especially when I import/export images, create panoramas and gaming.

[bezza...]

17 minutes ago, L0n3gr3yw0lf said:

I was interested in tips and thermal paste advi e for the CPU, that one has a tendency to thermal throttle, especially when I import/export images, create panoramas and gaming.

my advise is not to use liquid metal. before you open it try and rase the rear of the laptop (if the vents are there) do this with a book or somthing to give the vents more space to breath

[Qyygle]

That PTM7950 pad/paste material they showed a little while back isn't bad.

I have a studiobook which came factory applied with LM. I took the heatsink apart to get at the VRM chokes with superglue because it had some unbearably bad coil whine, and repasted using the 7950 at that time.

It actually isn't much different from the LM, especially at higher temp. I went back and repasted with Thermal Grizzly LM to check, and I honestly would only get about 1-2* different on the CPU compared to 7950. A weird side effect, was while in idle, the laptop bottom was Much hotter with the LM application, while for basically the same temperatures on-die, the PTM7590 being in it's solid state at lower temperatures kept the laptop chassis cooler for non-intensive tasks.

 

You can find resellers selling it on Amazon, or go with the aliexpress route they took for the video, but I think there's at least 2 resellers selling the real thing with prime shipping at this point. Just make sure to read the reviews.

[L0n3gr3yw0lf]

1 hour ago, Qyygle said:

That PTM7950 pad/paste material they showed a little while back isn't bad.

I have a studiobook which came factory applied with LM. I took the heatsink apart to get at the VRM chokes with superglue because it had some unbearably bad coil whine, and repasted using the 7950 at that time.

It actually isn't much different from the LM, especially at higher temp. I went back and repasted with Thermal Grizzly LM to check, and I honestly would only get about 1-2* different on the CPU compared to 7950. A weird side effect, was while in idle, the laptop bottom was Much hotter with the LM application, while for basically the same temperatures on-die, the PTM7590 being in it's solid state at lower temperatures kept the laptop chassis cooler for non-intensive tasks.

 

You can find resellers selling it on Amazon, or go with the aliexpress route they took for the video, but I think there's at least 2 resellers selling the real thing with prime shipping at this point. Just make sure to read the reviews.

Thanks, I will look into it. I had my mind on Thermal Grizzly as an option but I was curious if others had different experiences with other brands/producta.

I don't mind being hotter on idle, the laptop is my daily driver and sits on a arm bracket above the desk in open position 95% of the time. At the moment most of my travel is for work when I need to supply the boss with the images.

3 hours ago, bezza... said:

my advise is not to use liquid metal. before you open it try and rase the rear of the laptop (if the vents are there) do this with a book or somthing to give the vents more space to breath

Asus ZenBook Pro Duo has a hinge mechanism like Zephyrus gaming laptop where the screen lid will push the laptop up and raise the chassis's base about 1 cm off the table for extra intake.

Though I am using it on a arm with a gap of 2 cm under it for airflow.