Hot take: I finally tried a thermal pad instead of paste on a gaming laptop and the results were way different

Had this Asus ROG laptop in the shop with constant overheating. First, I cleaned it and put on fresh Arctic MX-4 paste like I always do. Temps dropped but still hit 95C under load. Then I swapped in a 1.5mm thick Thermal Grizzly pad on the GPU die just to see. After running the same stress test, the GPU now maxes out at 82C and stays there. The pad just seemed to handle the uneven heatsink pressure better on that specific board. Has anyone else found a case where pads beat out paste?

3 comments

3 Comments

ivan77414d ago

Couldn't the pad just be a better fit for that specific warped heatsink?

jadej5014d ago

That 1.5mm pad is likely too thick for most direct-die applications. The big drop probably came from fixing a bad paste job or poor heatsink contact. Pads can work, but they usually don't beat a properly applied high-end paste.

shane_park9214d ago

Lol this whole debate reminds me of when I tried to use a graphite pad on my old 7700k. Temps were fine at first, but after a few months of heat cycles it started to crumble at the edges and I got random thermal spikes. Went back to paste and it was rock solid again.