Replacement Laptop Parts

Hi, I'm new here and I wasn't sure where to post this thread. I did a search on the forums before posting this topic but I couldn't find anything, so here goes.

I did a thermal repasting a couple days ago, and boy it worked like a charm. At least for a day. While surfing the web and such, my GPU was running at around 40-50C, and during a three hour session of Dead Space 3 the highest my GPU ran was 86C. This was all without the aid of my cooling fan. Now today it's jumped up about 10 degrees and I'm a little worried. I have a feeling it's because I stupidly nicked the bottom of my heatsink with a screwdriver while trying to get the built up, hardened gunk off of the bottom of it.

I didn't spread the thermal past like a lot of people do because I hear that tends to cause air bubbles. I put a drop about the size of a grain of rice on there and let the heatsink do the work as far as spreading the compound's concerned.

My question is: Is there anywhere I can find replacement parts for an ASUS G60JX? Or does having a nicked heatsink really have that much of an effect on the heat transition of your laptop? Thanks in advance.

 

welcome to the forum

you need more thermal paste. you need more of a pea size than a grain of rice size.

might be better posting in the asus forum Asus Notebook Forum

 

I've noticed it's hard to get parts for Asus laptops lately especially the newer ones. so if any one has any tips or site for getting parts, I think that would be awesome.

 

Try Ebay...that usually a good source of used parts and sometimes new replacements parts....I did a general search and did find some parts and stuff for it...

 

If you need a pea sized which is a lot, them you may need a shim. that's just redonkulous unless you have a big Nvidia GPU die, in which case the high five method works rather well.

 

just going by guides people have posted on here over the years.
first 3 video's on you tube show one with a grain of rice size and 2 with a pea size so its totally upto the individual.

 

The thing with applying thermal paste using 'grain of rice' or 'pea size' is that very often you have paste going over the edges because of applying too much (reducing effectiveness), or in some cases, applying too little.
I was toying with such approaches and found them inadequate for me.
I always spread the paste (thinly) on my CPU and GPU and temperatures are better than fine.
The reason I prefer this method is because for me, it demonstrated effectiveness (no air bubbles), and its easier to apply than to keep guessing how much is 'enough' when using 'grain of rice' or 'pea size' (because thermal grease doesn't come out in such quantities and its for the most part a guessing game in my case) for laptop based equipment - plus I avoid spillage over the dies.
Besides, there are some thermal greases out there that don't come in a tube, but rather with in a tiny glass jar with a brush so it can be spread evenly. In such a scenario, you cannot squeeze the glass jar, and approximating how much you apply in the middle with the brush is a rather time consuming exercise, so its easier to spread using fingers or the brush itself).

As for the OP...
When was the last time you checked your laptop for dust build-up?
Its possible you applied enough thermal compound, but that your recent temperatures are higher because of a dust buildup rather than lack of thermal paste (which can also be a factor).

 

I cleaned out the laptop when I had it opened, so that shouldn't be the issue. Of course, this is the first time I've ever done this. I played a few of the games that I regularly played for a couple hours and the temperature doesn't seem to go over 86C, which I guess is a complete win because the system used to range into the upper 90's and then some while I was playing. I'm hoping that maybe this is just what the company calls the 'break-in' period. Maybe it'll go lower, or maybe the temperatures will stabilize. If the temperature keeps climbing up by Saturday, I'll probably have to redo the paste. I really appreciate the responses guys.

 

If your temperatures climbed by about 10 degrees in the last 24 hours, then I doubt it has something to do with a nicked heatsink.
Were you able to actually get a part of the heatsink off the rest of the unit, or are we talking scratch-like damage?
If its scratch like, I don't think it could cause this, because its likelier any such physical damage lowering the heat transfer efficiency would occur immediately and not days later.

Its possible you didn't apply the thermal paste properly, or/and that the heatsink is NOT touching down on the gpu (and maybe other parts) properly.

You will probably have to open the laptop, re-apply the paste and make sure that the heatsink is touching down on all components as it should.
My Acer 5930G has a bit of an oddity for a heatsink which is shared between the CPU and GPU (not exactly what I would call efficient), and the GPU has a section of the heatsink with bendable metal alloys that have to be tightly screwed down so the die would touch the heatsink properly and actually remove the heat.
Its possible you didn't screw it down properly and it managed to get loose, or the thermal grease was applied badly, or a combination of both.

Also... after doing so, you could look into undervolting your GPU.
I was able to undervolt my gpu to 0.89V and overclock it by 20%. Overall temperatures dropped from 85 deg C to 75 deg C on maximum load (with the overclock - without the overclock, they are about 5 degrees lower).

If after you have repeated the process (maybe 2 or 3 times to make sure its not your fault), then you can look into getting a new heatsink.

Although, is it also possible that you are misreading the temperatures?
I mean, temperature recording software has a tendency to record MAXIMUM temperature under load. Many gpu's can 'spike' to 5 or 10 degrees higher than what they usually do until they settle down into the standard range of temperatures.

Perhaps you can run Furmark in combination with Orthos to stress both CPU and GPU at the same time and monitor the temperatures in real time (unless you already did this).

 

I'll give it a shot, the undervolting I mean. I wasn't sure how tight I needed to tighten the bolts on the heatsinks, I didn't want to ruin the surface area. I'm most likely going to perform a repaste again this weekend just to make sure that I did it correctly. This time around, though, I'll probably spread it instead of putting a mound. I guess I'll have to find a clean card or something.

As far as cleaning the GPU and CPU themselves, how hard can I apply pressure onto the die without breaking them or ruining them? There was a spot of hardened stock paste that I couldn't get to on my CPU, no matter how hard I tried to scrub with a coffee filter. I used 91% isopropyl, but I'm considering getting the Arctic Cleaner from RadioShack.

As far as overclocking's concerned, I'm not all that great with it. I'm not sure what memory clock and core clocks are, but I use MSI to monitor the temperature and I used their Komboster program to watch temps. As long as I have my cooling pad on full blast, it seems to cool fine.