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Warning: a guy at the Chicago repair shop said skip thermal paste on laptop CPUs, that was dead wrong
He claimed the pads were enough and paste just made a mess, so I tried it on a Dell Latitude and it hit 95C under any load within a week. Cleaned it off and redid it with Arctic MX-4 and temps dropped 20 degrees. Anyone else run into techs who swear paste is pointless?
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amygonzalez11d ago
The "pads were enough" thing is wild because pads only work if the gap is exactly right for the pad thickness, which almost never happens on a laptop. I remember reading a writeup from a repair guy who tested bare metal vs paste on a few old ThinkPads and the bare one throttled hard within minutes, like 30C+ hotter. Metal on metal looks like it touches but there are tiny air gaps everywhere and air is a terrible heat mover. Also no idea why a tech would say paste makes a mess, its like the whole point is to fill the gap. Good on you for catching it before that Dell cooked itself.
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