Dell 7577 Freezing up After Thermal Paste (Liquid Metal) and Thermal Pad Replacement

Hello all how are you? I am a bit stumped here as I applied liquid metal (thermal grizzly conductonaut) and changed out the thermal pads to .3 FujuPoly Extreme pads. I used acrylic conformal coating and super 33+ tape so I do not believe there is a short as i double checked with a black light to make sure that everything was protected before i put on the tape. This worked fine originally but, I was worried that .3 would not be thick enough, so I opened up the laptop again, and applied the same type of thermal pads but a 1.0 on top of the .3. After I did this the laptop would boot up fine but after 10 min or so it would freeze up and I would have to reboot, however, temperatures are fine. I got worried that maybe 1.3 was too thick so I am waiting on .5 pads, I regret second guessing my self. Also, only half of the keyboard is lit up, but the ribbon cables look tight. Any ideas on what could be going on?

 

Sounds like something is loose inside. Or, your thermal pasting job is hacked. Could be more than just the CPU overheating and causing problems. This is exactly why I tell people to leave their notebooks alone when it comes to this stuff. I would pull it apart, and pretty well re do the entire job and you will see where you messed up. Hard way to learn but I am thinking thats the only way you will find out what is not right in there.

 

Sounds to me like your heatsink is not making good thermal contact. People generally misunderstand what thermal paste and pads are for. The only thing that paste is supposed to do is to make a solid thermal connection between the CPU/GPU and the heatsink. There are slight imperfections in the surfaces of the metal on the CPU/GPU and the heatsink and the paste is basically filling in the gaps. You do NOT want a thick layer of paste or you will create a thermal barrier causing a heat insulator and the heat will not properly flow from the CPU/GPU to the heatsink and will cause exactly what you are describing. I generally use a paste like Wakefield type 120 Thermal Joint Compound. There's a lot of nonsense lately regarding all of these "super pastes" etc. Use a product like the Wakefield product that has a good proven track record of reliability from a reputable company with engineering data to support it. You want to use a very thin coating of it between the CPU/GPU and the heatsink. The heatsink needs to be screwed down tight to mate with the CPU/GPU. you should NOT see excess paste oozing from the sides when you screw down the heatsink. We're talking a thin layer here. I typically don't use the pads. They tend to have poorer thermal conductive properties than the good pastes in general. I recently rebuilt an Alienware 17 for a friend of mine and used the above mentioned product on the CPU and both GPUs. It ran cooler and the lockup issues he was experiencing totally went away. Use some 99% Isopropyl alcohol to totally clean all of the old paste off of the CPU/GPUs and the heatsinks and then apply a thin layer of paste to the CPU/GPU only - NOT BOTH SURFACES.

As far as your keyboard lights, you have a bad cable connection somewhere. Check to make sure that if it's one of those little flip up ribbon connectors that the cable is solidly seated all the way in before you flip the tab down. If it's an older machine I generally use some Caig Deoxit on a paper towel or q-tip to clean up the ribbon cables a bit - they tend to oxidize over time causing issues.

Above all else, take your time and you'll get it fixed. Hope you get it fixed!

Trev