adding artic silver to a laptop does wonders

i have a toshiba satellite l25 with a 1.4ghz intel dothan cpu 64kb L1 1mb L2. with the stock thermal pads it ran at a bit over 60C when running seti@home.
the stock heatsink uses a heatpipe and cools the ati video chip, the northbridge and the cpu.

now that i pin modded it from 100mhz (400)to 133(533), i decided to replace the thermal pads on the cpu, northbridge and video chip with artic silver. the cpu now runs at 1862mhz, the northbridge at 133, i dont know if the ati video chip got overclocked or not. but in spite of my overclock, the cpu runs around 40C while using seti. thats a 20C drop in temp and its now overclocked so its even putting out more heat then when it was at 1.4ghz.

all in all i would say artic silver is a great addition to a laptop. the outside of the laptop case is much cooler now. no more burning legs and hot palms when im using it. i notice the fan is quieter too.

if any of you guys have a chance to replace the tim of youre laptops with artic silver, or probably ANY brand of good tim would work just as good, i would highly suggest it. even if you dont overclock the laptop, it keeps things a lot cooler, espically youre lap. the outside of my laptop is ALMOST cool to the touch now, where as before it got fairly hot.

If I ever get around to replacing TIM in my laptop, I'll stick to MX-2 Non-conductive stuff makes me feel safer with all the stuff mashed into a laptop chassis.

I've replaced the TIM on a few laptops. It does make a BIG difference.

I tried to do that on my current laptop but I cannot get access to the CPU as of yet.

kind of off-topic, but does anyone know of turion TL-50 pinmods? Perhaps with AS5, i can get cooler temps, in which case I'd like to get a little more juice out of my proc.

If you would have bought a decent laptop in the first place you wouldn't have to replace the thermal pad because it would already have a decent thermal compound.

Tophinater said:

If you would have bought a decent laptop in the first place you wouldn't have to replace the thermal pad because it would already have a decent thermal compound.

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Some people can't afford anything more expensive than $600, and even that takes a whole month's income. Don't bash people because they aren't rich.

Tophinater said:

If you would have bought a decent laptop in the first place you wouldn't have to replace the thermal pad because it would already have a decent thermal compound.

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Even expensive laptops have crappy themal paste.

Dapman02 said:

Even expensive laptops have crappy themal paste.

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Yep. Remember when macbook pros had that issue of having too little thermal paste (and in the pictures it was the white stuff)? Even something that top-tier can have shortcomings.

petteyg359 said:

Some people can't afford anything more expensive than $600, and even that takes a whole month's income. Don't bash people because they aren't rich.

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I've had two IBM thinkpads that I didn't pay more than $200 for and they both came with decent quality thermal paste and had similar specs to that toshiba (intel 1.4Ghz proc).

Even expensive laptops have crappy themal paste.

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I said "decent", not expensive. My $900 samsung comes with thermal paste and is a lot cheaper than the comparable and "high end" macbook pros.

Its true it does I have experienced it as well. I believe the reason is all because of the lack of airflow. Without the high CFM, the paste transfers heat a lot more efficiently compared to the stock one.

The more airflow you have, the less the paste has to "work"....so it will work exponentially good when put against the OEM stuff.

i paid 1500 for my laptop and changing the tim made a HUGE difference on my heat output i highly recommend it to any laptop user

I swapped my TIM out for some AS5, temps went from 98C to 75C when folding on both cores!

ps2cho said:

Its true it does I have experienced it as well. I believe the reason is all because of the lack of airflow. Without the high CFM, the paste transfers heat a lot more efficiently compared to the stock one.

The more airflow you have, the less the paste has to "work"....so it will work exponentially good when put against the OEM stuff.

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The reason is that thermal paste provides less thermal contact resistance between the heat pipe and the proc. die. This means that for a given amount of heat transfer, there will be a smaller difference in temperature between the heatsink and proc die. For more info google "Fourier's Law".

Do laptop manufacturers still put warranty take on their machines?

madhatter256 said:

Yep. Remember when macbook pros had that issue of having too little thermal paste (and in the pictures it was the white stuff)? Even something that top-tier can have shortcomings.

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Actually they had too much and it ended up insulating rather then transferring heat.

Tophinater said:

The reason is that thermal paste provides less thermal contact resistance between the heat pipe and the proc. die. This means that for a given amount of heat transfer, there will be a smaller difference in temperature between the heatsink and proc die. For more info google "Fourier's Law".

Do laptop manufacturers still put warranty take on their machines?

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pretty sure the thermal paste is there only to fill in nodes/microscopic cracks and such between the heatsink and the processor die. Thus increasing surface area, and therefore; rate of heat transfer. That's why people often use little (to none at all) thermal paste when they lap the processor IHS and their heat sink. Since there are no minor defects, and surface area is already at its maximum, the thermal paste would act more as an insulator than a conductor of heat.


edit: Anyone know anything about the pinmod question i posted earlier?

I do not, but it'd probably deserve its own topic in order to try and get a good answer.

I.M.O.G. said:

I do not, but it'd probably deserve its own topic in order to try and get a good answer.

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up now: http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?p=6130313#post6130313

jokers_greg said:

pretty sure the thermal paste is there only to fill in nodes/microscopic cracks and such between the heatsink and the processor die. Thus increasing surface area, and therefore; rate of heat transfer. That's why people often use little (to none at all) thermal paste when they lap the processor IHS and their heat sink. Since there are no minor defects, and surface area is already at its maximum, the thermal paste would act more as an insulator than a conductor of heat.

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Yes, thats basically just a rehash of what I said. The thermal contact resistance between a sink and source is a function of the EFFECTIVE surface area where the sink and source make contact. By increasing the effective surface area the thermal contact resistance is decreased which in turn creates a greater thermal conduction coefficient. Given the same rate of heat transfer from the proc this will create a lower temperature gradient.

Tophinater said:

Yes, thats basically just a rehash of what I said. The thermal contact resistance between a sink and source is a function of the EFFECTIVE surface area where the sink and source make contact. By increasing the effective surface area the thermal contact resistance is decreased which in turn creates a greater thermal conduction coefficient. Given the same rate of heat transfer from the proc this will create a lower temperature gradient.

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I don't want to get into splitting hairs, but it's not the same thing. thermal paste has a higher thermal resistance than just having a direct contact between the heatsink and IHS. So in a case where surface area is constant (say a perfectly lapped HS and IHS), the thermal paste will increase resistance (even if it is spread out perfectly evenly aka same surface area).

However thermal paste has a lower thermal resistance as opposed to air (that would be trapped in the aforementioned minor cracks/defects), that is why it is useful in stock configurations.