Of Laptops and the Reapplication of Thermal Materials

[cybersplice]

Greetings, fellow nerds.

My trusty Asus GX502GW is away in Scotland at the moment being repaired under warranty.
The battery died, and I decided that the cost was worthwhile - 3-4 second battery life really isn’t all that good.

Gotta love that 90 day battery warranty clause, right?

Anyway, while they had it I asked them to look at the thermals. The GPU was idling at 65-75C, and the CPU wasn’t a whole lot better. Under load, I was being sterilised.

Here’s my question: how often do you reapply thermal material on laptops?

This is the first gaming laptop I’ve ever owned, historically avoiding them like plague. This one suits me due to work and lifestyle.

Thermals were nothing like that at first, so I was disappointed when they got like this.

I couldn’t dream of running Cyberpunk on it, it would tank. And its’ an RTX 2070, even if it’s a laptop power and thermal profile.

[xyz]

To keep my laptop temps down this is what I do: Blow air(you can use an air compressor or canned air) into it with a datavac every couple months to reduce dust build up.

For thermal paste/compund/pads that really depends on the device and the quality of the thermal compound. I would say about every 2-3 year is probably good unless you are seeing degradation/higher temps beforehand. I use thermal grizzly’s Kryonaut as it is pretty good quality and tends to last longer than most OEM thermal compound.

[cybersplice]

Thanks! That’s helpful.