~New Thermal Paste? BENEFITS?~

Hey guys so i was wondering if i should open up my m11x r1 & add new thermal paste. If by doing so, will it give less heat buildup resulting in Lesser battery Drain?

-Just trying to Optimize & increase the longevity of my investment


had 3 laptop replacements & 2 motherboard's reinstalled. So i kinda know how to tear apart this beast.


Any responses opinions & Paste recommendations would be great!

 

It could reduce the temperatures of the components.

Main benefits would be for overclocking.

Battery life should be about the same. You could say the fan has to run less, but the difference shouldn't be that large.

 

i did it (on an r2) and didn't see any drastic temperature difference if any at all. it kind of seems like it stays in the 40s more (internet'ing and such, it stays in the mid 40s C to low 50s), but it could be my imagination. even if it isn't my imagination, it's only a couple of degrees different--and only that some of the time.

the r1 is already so low in temperature, i wouldn't bother.

 

Really, corwinicre, no difference in temps? I thought I'd seen reports of temperature drops from one or two others who have done the CPU and GPU. I forgot, what was it you used?

 

I didn't see too much of a change either, maybe 1C lower. To be honest, considering the fact that you have to disassemble the entire laptop just to reapply thermal, it's not worth it.

 

which thermal compound i used? arctic silver.

Like I said, it does seem to stay in the 40s C a little more, but it definitely doesn't get any cooler than it did before (i.e., the minimum temperature hasn't changed), so I suspect it's my imagination.

 

Arctic Silver takes a LONG time to cure. 200+ hours before you will see the real performance.

I've found that with laptops, thermal compound doesnt drop the temperatures max operating too much. What Ive seen that it does is take longer for temperatures to rise and they drop faster when not under load. Ive also seen that they dont quite get as hot.

For example: My Atom N520 with stock thermal pad would reach 61C within 2 minutes of being put under load. With AS5 applied (and fully cured) it would only reach 56C and take about 30 senconds longer.

 

I'm considering doing this eventually. I'm a little intimidated by the process though since I have no experience with applying thermal compound. Anyone can swap out components etc., but this seems a little risky to be handling the components like that on a ~$1000 system that's still under warranty. I'm mainly interested in this because the R2 (or at least my R2) gets really hot, I play TF2 and even without overclocking anything it gets a little too hot to touch on the bottom near the nameplate after about 20-30 minutes. I'm not so much worried about the components being too hot but more so about keeping the system cool when it's on my lap. Would this be a noticeable difference? Also, this might seem like a dumb question, but what could potentially go wrong? And I'm guessing if said problem occurred that it wouldn't be covered in the warranty, right? Right now I'm thinking it's not worth the hassle.

 

hmm maybe it did help then and I'm right that it drops down to the 40s C faster.

I think I did it about a week ago (maybe?) and put it to sleep at night. That's only about 16*7=112 hours, so it's not cured yet, either.

It's no different than spreading mayo on a sandwich. Don't put so much that when you squish down the bread (heatsink) that it comes out on the sides, but you want enough that there are no dry spots with no mayo nor places where there are lots. A thin, even coat is best. The first time I did one, I pulled the heatsink up after to make sure it looked right. You'll have to do it twice that way, but you'll know you're doing it right.

not sure about the warranty part. They wouldn't know you did anything until after the tech is there to replace the part, though.

As for it feeling cooler, as madchild said, it won't change the minimum temperature, but it may make it cool down quicker (jury's still out on mine in that regard).

 

You'll probably get better cooling results using a laptop cooler. Check the forum for a recent thread or two.

 

What does alienware use? i figure it should be something of above-average quality since they advertise many of the products as overclockable

 

I don't need to lower the minimum temperature, on idle it's cool enough. I want to lower the mid-max load temperature.

 

it's the standard grey crap every premade comp comes with.

 

yup, it's paraffin based thermal material. It does a decent job and will not droop since it's wax based. As for replacing TIM, if you're not overclocking beyond the factory overclock and not experiencing abnormally high temps there's no real reason to. Surprisingly the Dell stuff is very good quality TIM. Even with some Shin-Etsu G751(which is As5 w/o the 200hour burn in basically) on my 720 in my M17x I saw probably ~ 1-3C tops reduction.

 

I think the advantage of doing this isn't in the better aftermarket compound you can use, but the correct application when you DIY.

Lots of times companies use way too much compound or its applied poorly. They don't exactly use skilled labor to assemble these laptops.

 

The paraffin based TIM used in these laptops prevents this almost completely, it's peel off and stick on in the center, and it's not liquid based so it can not be spread unevenly. Although that doesn't mean it does not happen, the cases I have seen are extremely few and far between.

 

you serious? that is lame i figured alienware would use something better than that because of how they advertise their systems as overclockable. now i am totally considering going to get that Arctic Cooling MX-3 for the m11x

 

Remember, Dell makes these laptops now, so anything can happen.

 

I have a 6-9 degree difference between the two cores consistently. Could I have a case of uneven application? That said, I do have a good chip that can clock stable at 164. I'm just wondering if it will impact that ability over time.

Thing about AS that bothers me is that you have to reapply every 6-8 months because the temps go up over time. I wonder how the longevity of the paraffin based stuff compares to AS.

 

Imbroglio

is that in celsius or fahrenheit? one of my cores is appears to be consistently 3-to-4 degrees celsius lower than the other.

 

no, besides considering that different parts of the processor core are much hotter/colder than others, software simply can not accurately measure core to core differences. It's rather normal. The core that's hotter is probally the one that runs all the time, my core #3 is consistently 7C hotter than the others too.

the reason it's used in OEM computers is because it's typical application life span is years, not months. As I said, it's wax based, so it does not droop or change in viscosity enough for it to move away from the heatsink.

 

It's Celsius. I'm using CPUID Hardware Monitor Pro to measure the temps. The only time it drops to 4 degrees difference is when I'm gaming and then the chip doesn't get hotter than 65 c with a Belkin notebook cooling pad. Right now Core 0 is 44, Core 2 is 36 and I just turned on the computer.

 

I wouldn't recommend this procedure with the R1, as it already runs so cool the benefits would be minimal at best. It is the coolest running laptop I have ever seen. Even my daughters Acer 10 inch runs significantly hotter!

 

thought I'd bump this post for R2 people

Did you change your cooling paste? I have a tube of Arctic Silver I've been using for desktops I build.

Is the R2 stock one garbage?

 

@Dan - I think it boils down to periodic replacement of the tim. If you are ok with doing it again in 6-8 months then it might benefit you. If you are not willing to re-apply the arctic silver 2 times a year then I wouldn't.

BW, StevenX

 

you could always grab a tube of arctic cooling mx-3 to my knowledge that does not need to be reapplied to remain effective

 

Really? I put Arctic Silver 5 on my desktop when i first built it & i have never had to replace it yet. the cooling has been the same no changes over time. Is it because its a laptop that it needs replacing? or because the Actic Silver degrades?

 

I've also used Artic Silver 2 for a number of years on dozens of computers and haven't experienced long term temperature changes. Where are you getting this idea that you need to re-apply it twice a year?

 

Ive also never seen any performance degradation with AS5, and Ive been using it on ALL my computers for the last 6 years.

My server has had one application of AS5, which was almost 5 years ago and has run pretty much 24/7 since and still keeps the same temperatures it did when the AS5 was new and fully burned in.

 

Yea AS5 is an awesome product. I have used MX-2 with same results on other PCs.

 

Think I might give this a go on my R2 today. Been using AS5 for years too and never needed re-applying. I vote that its just misinformation from somewhere.
Will post back before and after results. Maybe some pics if i can be bothered too...

 

Well, not a bad laptop to work on. Strip down was really straight forward. Probably about half hour from start to finish. No special tools required just a small phillips PH1 size driver.

As to results of TIM application... CPU temps dropped by about 1 degree C and GPU by 2. These temps are immediately after application so they may drop slightly more after a couple of weeks use... Will post back anything significant.

 

a little bit of both most thermal compound are not made for usage in a laptop that will be exposed to fast changes in environement temperature humidity etc a laptop with the coling capacitie of the new alienwares that would stay on a table all days would not require to redo the job

but most laptop get as high as 80 or 90 deg so most paste will get cooked or lose performance with repeated treatement of such

and maybe Dellienware's grey stuf is better qualitie/better aplied then the area 51 were on mine the grey stuf had dryed and 90% of it was around the actual die it was ment to cool i almost had to scratch it off

and then i got some chill factor at first it droped my temp for about 5-8 degre and after 2 month of use i'm afraid to game i probably cooked the damn paste (sc2's bug probably helped it) but when ever is stress the gpu to for to long i reache 107 and my gpu shutdown

 

i bought Tuniq TX-4 today for my m11x R1. i'll post the pics before and after. it will arrive 3 days from now (shipping delayed because of the storm Megi...). i hope this will be an educational for anyone who's interested.

 

Yeah, I know I'm somewhat necroing a thread. Just wanted to share my experience with putting on new TIM on the m11xR1.

I had problems with the computer getting REALLY hot. Tried some Deus Ex Human Revolution on it and well I was surprised ythat you could actually run it, abysmal fps sure. But still.

The temps was another story.

So I took the computer apart, used my mouth and some q-tips to blow away some dust on the fan. Cleaned off the CPU and GPU with chemically clean petroleum and but a small blob of IC7 diamond on it instead.

During load(Playing Deus Ex that is) my CPUs peaked at 91 and 92 C while the GPU hit a "burnt to a crisp" 97C.

After cleaning the fan and putting on som IC7 i got 57 and 56C on CPUs and 59C on the GPU. Also, the fan didn't even run at maxspeed anymore. That's a pretty decent improvement if I do say so myself.



tldr: got a 35C tempdrop on both CPU and GPU just by taking the computer apart, cleaing the fan and putting on some new awesome TIM