Artic Silver 5 on the laptop heatsink made a H U G E difference

[awns729]

Cleaned out my friend's laptop (it was FILLED with dust - the fan would blast on high and NO air would come out of the vent). Just to let you all know, he had the same model laptop I did. I traded him my laptop and just switched teh hard drives as I knew I wouldn't have time to return it to him. So right now I'm comparing my dust free, original thermal paste laptop to his also dust free Artic Silver 5 laptop. From how mine is currently (with the stock thermal paste or whatever Gateway uses) to his AS5 on the HS, it seems to be a huge difference. I have no quantiative numbers, but just from having used teh computer for 2 years, it seems the fan is on slightly less of the time.

If you guys are running hot and it's time to dust out the insides, I might recommend this. If you do try it, I'd lvoe to hear the results (+ temperature differences). When I get my laptop back, I"ll be sure to measure before AS5 and then test it out after AS5 and post back. Just thought it was interesting, especially for those of us who actually use it on our laps/beds like we're not supposed to. At least if the fan isn't on, it can't be starving for air.

 

[frozenlead]

Can you get some numbers on it? I'd like to see them.

 

[awns729]

I'm trading back my laptop on this Friday. I'll try and get numbers by the end of the weekend.

How should I measure? Idle temp and then temp under load? and then same thing with AS5? The program I'm using, Real Temp 3.0, seems to have a benchmarking utility/sensor test, which seems like it might work for this exact thing, but I haven't looked into it at all yet. Anyone have more info on it?

 

[frozenlead]

Let the notebook run idle for 30 minutes, then take a reading. Then run prime95 for 30 minutes and take a reading. I'd prefer CoreTemp or Everest, but it doesn't matter a whole lot.

Of course, make sure the notebook is positioned on a flat surface that is fairly resistant to heat, like tile. Benchmarking on a blanket is kind of counter-productive.

Did you only apply it on the CPU?

 

[awns729]

I'll probably do benchmarks wiht the laptop on a cooler (cooler fans off) that's slightly raised, if that sounds okay? This is what I use 95% of the time I'm on the computer. As long as I'm consistent with doing all the tests like this, shoud be fine right?

Yes only on the CPU, not any other heatsinks. (I'm assuming you're referring to the NB heatsink? I'm not really very familiar with this).

It's interesting actually, I wasn't even able to get the paste/pad off of the entire heatsink, no matter how much I pryed at it and poured alcohol on it, possibly because his laptop got so hot with dust completely blocking the vent. The compound was caked onto the heatsink. I got it off 95% of the heatsink, and the remaining 5% just created a border around where it sits on the proc. By my estimation, 25-35% of the thermal compound wasn't even in contact with the proc. There was a big rectangle of compound on the heatsink, but there was a smaller raised rectangle on the proc, where it seems liek the two make contact. I only focused on getting the compound off in the area of the smaller rectangle.

I'll post pictures when I do mine, if anyone cares.

Edit: also, any recommendations for fan rpm monitors?