Laptop benching

[batboy]

I got this far (see photo). I didn't even know how to release the RAM, had to google it. I see the wireless card and there is an empty slot on the opposite side of the connector. Not that I plan to get that PCIe riser, but it does look like it would connect.



I see the CPU backplate, so this motherboard mounts upside down. I didn't know that. It appears the CPU just has a heat spreader thing in contact with it instead of a traditional heatsink. I can't really see much until I take things apart more and I'm trying to decide if I should. I see the heatpipe going over to a heatsink of sorts and a blower fan. It all appears clean. I know my parents didn't use this much and I was told they took it to the Geek Squad (face palm) one time (why? I don't know). They probably blew it all out with air at that point. Now what?

 

[Johan45]

It looks like you have to go in from the other side to get to the CPU unless the board lifts out.

 

[knoober]

In most modern laptops I have seen the cpu cooler has a single heatpipe that travels over the Northbridge and all exhausts at the blower you see in the pic. It's okay to replace the cpu pad with TIM, but leave all the other pads in place. I tried replacing the pads on the NB and the power section with TIM and had weird issues with startup and shutdown until I put the pads back.

 

[batboy]

The motherboard was held in with one screw, same as the wireless card. This laptop has definitely been apart before. Tool marks here and there, screws heads half stripped, etc. The heat spreader sits on other chips too (besides the CPU), maybe graphics stuff and/or power regulator stuff. Looks like there's a mix of old mounting tape and newer somewhat thicker foam tape which when I look at a side view with a magnifying glass, I can see it's not touching evenly. Basically a hack job... probably the usual Geek Squad quality of work. Guess they can't afford to take all morning taking one laptop apart like I can. Probably a good thing I have it apart and redoing the TIM. That thick foam mounting tape is probably not even thermal tape. I hope I have enough thermal pad leftover. As for what thermal paste to put on the CPU IHS, I'm thinking Arctic Silver 5, right? That's what everyone wants me to use, I'm pretty sure.

 

[knoober]

As for what thermal paste to put on the CPU IHS, I'm thinking Arctic Silver 5, right? That's what everyone wants me to use, I'm pretty sure.

There was a different thread around here where someone was talking about using liquid metal on their laptop and when I started thinking about it it made sense. Most mobile procs are already bare die and if you don't have any capacitors on the cpu then you should be good to go. There was a point made about the liquid metal shifting and spreading due to the mobile nature of a laptop, but the member who brought it up said they had no issues. I can't wait to have an excuse to re-TIM my old laptop so I can put the good stuff on there

 

[batboy]

Sentential has done the liquid metal on his laptop. The heatspreader sure looks like aluminum with a copper heat pipe. Not sure I want to put Conductonaut on it. I had a hard time applying it when I was relidding my CPU. Here are my choices of thermal paste. I know there's more, but I didn't want to waste time looking. I was joking about the AS5. I caught flak for using that under the CPU IHS when I first delidded.



If I don't use the Thermal Grizzly, I might try MX-4.

 

[batboy]

I have the heatsink contraption removed and I lucked out and found thermal tape just like the original, so I replaced the one that was messed up. I'm going to follow Kmoobers advice and leave the pads as is and replace the CPU TIM. Speaking of which, the thermal paste on the CPU die was spread all over the place. What a mess. I couldn't get a close up, but there is a label on the CPU that actually is on top the die a little. Not only that, but a big label is stuck onto the fins of the heatsink which blocks air flow. Must be mental midgets putting these laptops together. I thought the Chinese were better than that?



What can be upgraded on this? RAM and HDD, anything else? I just happen to have a Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" drive that I could use if I wanted.

 

[Johan45]

Isopropyl, an old toothbrush and some coffee filters will fix that right up and I would use the mx4 is not conductive and works well. Don't use the adhesive. If the pads are torn I usually replace them but if it's mine and I don't have any I dab just a touch of paste in there to seal the gaps.
EDIT: watch out for that rabbit hole

 

[batboy]

Sorry, but I wimped out with the liquid metal. This was not the place to make a mess and I made a big mess last time. I got it to work, but with this laptop I really can't justify being hardcore when I can't even overclock it. So, I used MX-4 instead. It's going back together. Those small little ribbon cables are a PITA.

LOL... seriously Johan, I didn't see your post until after I posted this.

 

[Johan45]

Nice just take your time and yes they are

 

[Sentential]

Sorry, but I wimped out with the liquid metal. This was not the place to make a mess and I made a big mess last time. I got it to work, but with this laptop I really can't justify being hardcore when I can't even overclock it. So, I used MX-4 instead. It's going back together. Those small little ribbon cables are a PITA.

LOL... seriously Johan, I didn't see your post until after I posted this.

If you change your mind you've got nothing to worry about just use electrical tape to seal off the CPU like I did and you'll be just fine. Also OooooooOO looks like you've got an upgradable CPU! Also I wouldn't worry about the aluminum around the block; you've got a large pad of plastic separating it from where you're going to use LM so you're good to go.

 

[batboy]

After I got the aluminum spreader/heat pipe thing off, I saw where it makes contact with the CPU that it's copper. So, I can't really use the aluminum as an excuse. Not being able to OC it was a biggie though.

Looks like I got mixed matched RAM. Two different brands and different sizes. (1) Samsung 4GB DDR3-1333 and (2) Micron 2GB DDR3-1333. I always prefer matched RAM. This is an Intel HM65 Express chipset, isn't it dual channel? I know the manual says 8GB max. I ordered the same exact 4GB Samsung module from Amazon just now. Curse your one click checkout. Maybe mismatched RAM also contributed to poor performance?

 

[batboy]

Well, the good news is that it still works after me tearing it down and putting it back together. More good news, it's running right at 10 degrees C. cooler than before and turbo boost is now hitting up to 2.9 GHz. Using the XTU benchmark I got 89 C. for a max in several runs yesterday before I remounted the CPU cooler. I just ran XTU twice after I put it back together and max temp is 79. Very good, that makes the whole project worthwhile right there.

The bad news, ok maybe not bad, but not so good news is the benchmark score is exactly the same as before. So, no performance gain. But, maybe when I get matched RAM in that will help (and SSD?). Help, I stepped into a rabbit hole and sunk down to my knee.

At least I can get it to run at max turbo boost of 3.1 GHz for a few seconds at a time now.

 

[Sentential]

Well, the good news is that it still works after me tearing it down and putting it back together. More good news, it's running right at 10 degrees C. cooler than before and turbo boost is now hitting up to 2.9 GHz. Using the XTU benchmark I got 89 C. for a max in several runs yesterday before I remounted the CPU cooler. I just ran XTU twice after I put it back together and max temp is 79. Very good, that makes the whole project worthwhile right there.

The bad news, ok maybe not bad, but not so good news is the benchmark score is exactly the same as before. So, no performance gain. But, maybe when I get matched RAM in that will help (and SSD?). Help, I stepped into a rabbit hole and sunk down to my knee.

At least I can get it to run at max turbo boost of 3.1 GHz for a few seconds at a time now.

View attachment 193834

LM is only going to get you a few more degrees at this point it's an issue of metal to airflow that's the problem. Matching ram with low timings will definitely help, normally the go to are Ballistix or HyperX Impacts (I plan on the buying impact). The only thing that'll boost graphic benchmarks at this point is something like I said with an eGPU dock. I doubt you've got thunderbolt ports on the laptop, if you did then that changes things as you can get a proper eGPU dock working and use one of your RX580s cheaply.

 

[EarthDog]

What good would an egpu do for him?

 

[Sentential]

What good would an egpu do for him?

I assume he's running 3dmark or some other benchmark?

 

[EarthDog]

GPU benchmarks are good for GPUs. You want the fastest CPU below it. Adding an eGPU wouldn't help anything as far as benchmarking goes as the scoring doesn't work that way.

 

[batboy]

The short term goal is to harvest some benching points with the laptop. Long term is if I can get this back into tiptop shape is to make it my primary laptop and relegate my other one as my backup since it's way slower.

When I checked the battery life, it says it's charged and I ran it on battery about 10 minutes no problem, but I also get a message to consider replacing the battery (doesn't say what's wrong or why). I know this laptop was a closet queen and barely got used. So, years of not keeping the battery charged took it's toll, probably.

At some point while messing around on the laptop, a message popped up saying the version of Windows was not genuine. Then I was bombarded by messages saying "You need to get online to resolve this." and a bunch of crap like that. Like my parents would put a bootleg copy of Windows on a computer. I almost called up Microsoft to yell at them for even suggesting my parents used pirated software. I wasn't about to go online since this has no active antivirus. I had uninstalled some crap expired AV they had put on, but never bothered to keep up to date. I finally did get Windows 7 reauthenticated, so all is well again. No more sleepless nights wondering if the software police would break down my door because an old version of Windows, that Microsoft no longer supports, gave an erroneous error message.

 

[batboy]

Ah ha! So, just as I suspected. The mixed RAM was hindering performance. My wife is at work, so I sneaked a peek into her laptop. Lo and behold, she had a 4GB Samsung DDR3-1333 RAM module. Shhh, I slipped it out and paired it up with the one I had, it was an exact match. So, I put two Samsung 4 giggers into the laptop I was working on and benchmarked XTU again. Yeppers, it gained 20 points with just changing from 6GB of mismatched RAM to 8GB of matched RAM. Going from 6 to 8 GB might have helped some, but I'm convinced most of that was just better throughput. Last night I tried a bunch of things and only gained 2 points, so ripping off a 20 point gain on the first try is significant.

 

[EarthDog]

20 points is within run variance, no?