MSI GS65 Stealth - Thermal paste comparison (Stock vs Arctic MX4)

I didn't like the throttling and the temps I was getting so I decided to repaste my GS65. I was a little nervous about using Liquid Metal so I used Arctic MX4 since I already had some. I figured I'd record and share the results in case it's useful for anyone else. Check out how much paste was applied from the factory. Pretty crazy.

https://preview.ibb.co/fCzysd/IMG_20180602_203827.jpg

Some notes... I'm no professional and have only taken one other laptop apart before. This was far more tedious. It took me about an hour to do everything. Both of these benchmark runs were done with a -134mv undervolt and 36x multipler underclock for an apples to apples comparison. I didn't include the GPU since it was already getting decent temps and maxing out at 72*C in these tests. After the repaste the GPU was about the same.

The changes weren't amazing, but on the plus side I don't see any small thermal throttling spikes in AIDA64 now either. Was it worth the risk and voiding the warranty? Meh.

 

MSI allows users to open the laptop for disk maintenance, ram and thermal paste application...im not sure about LM but from what i know LM will voids the warranty.

 

Really? That is good to know. I thought it was odd you have to remove the "factory seal" sticker to even upgrade the SSD or RAM.

 

Well some resellers could not accept this kind of action but if you deal directly with MSI, you can break the seal sticker without any problems... this is a official response about that from my last RMA,

“MSI users have permission to void the warranty sticker to upgrade RAM, HDD and also for cleaning purposes. However, note that any mechanical damage that may occur during the above actions is not covered by the manufacturer's warranty.”

 

All manufacturers are like that in the EU, and even in the US the warranty void sticker was ruled to be illegal/not a legal binding contract, so, clean, upgrade and repaste to your heart contempt.

if doing so you nick the mobo with a screwdriver, RIP warranty.

 

LM is not really appropriate for laptops, even when you take precautions. As the gap that a thermal compound needs to fill is wider on a laptop, a more viscous paste should be used instead of a less viscous LM.

 

Yea I'd be too nervous to do LM even with nail polish and pads around the die. Laptops get moved around too much... I'd be worried about not doing a perfect job and the tiniest bit coming loose and frying my mobo. I can live with the performance of the non electrically conductive stuff.

 

Great information here! Nice write up.

 

I'll never understand how a gaming laptop in 2018 throttles out of the box and we need repastes/undervolt to fix them...bad design and QC. The thing is that they market them with a super mega cooling technology inside.

 

I'd say testing methodology needs an update, if they're testing for a particular load and it's fine but most users exceed that load level, then it's not actually fine.

 

Yea it makes you wonder what they deem as acceptable for temperatures and clock speeds. Because basically any common benchmarking or stress test program will bring it to it's throttling limits. With these CPUs you don't expect to be throttling so much right from the manufacturer that advertises a great cooling design, as wickette stated.

 

Stress test is a method to ensure quality and integrity of system components, but it's not qualified as real life test because a system is less likely to have both CPU & GPU running at 100% full load at all times.