Was considering opening my laptop up to remove built up dust on the fans and figured I would refresh the thermal paste on the heat sinks as well. Given that my machine is known to run hot I figured after a couple years this would be time well invested (Acer Predator Helios 300). Is there any specific thermal paste which is required? I have arctic silver 5 on hand from tinkering with flashlights, will this suffice or does it need to be dielectric for some reason? Actually, forget suffice, I’d prefer the best option, for a few bucks I don’t mind buying a new tube if it will help with temps/performance/longevity.
I don’t know if it deteriorates in performance but AS5 always dries out on me in lights. My cheaper Ceramique 2 doesn’t. The difference surely won’t be noticed in a light, but maybe it would in a CPU.
I used Arctic MX-4 on my MacBook Pro and Mac Pro recently. The stuff gets good reviews on Amazon and my laptop runs noticeably cooler now. (Can’t speak for the Mac Pro since I don’t set it on my lap when I use it, but there’s no way it’s worse off after replacing the 11-year-old paste.)
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sp5it, what brand of white silicone do you recomend ?
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I currently use AS MX4 and after remodding a light 2yrs later, I noticed the MX4 was getting dryer than I would like to see. I had read it should last 7yrs but I’m not convinced on that.
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From an OCD/ADD tangent on this topic… Noctua NT-H1, Arctic MX-2 and MX-4, and Gelid GC-extreme seem to be the best options for reasonable price and top performance. But in reality, any paste isn’t going to save you if your surfaces aren’t in good contact. I personally went for a dark horse in the Phanteks PH-NDC despite my gut swaying me to the NT-H1. I’m about to open up my 3yr and 8yr old Lenovo T series laptops and give them a likely much needed refresh. I’ve noticed the fan on my P52s is running a lot lately and battery life is down (likely the li-ions are seeing a down turn too). I’ll report my findings here.
Anything will ‘last’ that long, it’s a matter of where you set your performance cut-off. I couldn’t find any objective testing to show this kind of thing. I imagine if you can do it once, doing it once a year or two shouldn’t be a problem.
Been using AS5 and MX4 for years, no issues. I have not found much difference between the non metal compounds. AS5 has been an old staple that has and is lasting over 6 years on my Clevo W110ER and two new game builds. I have a big tube of the white stuff but tend to use the pricer TIM due to some laptops are a real PITA to repaste. Let us know how the white silicone stuff works with your temp profiles.
The benchmarks show it’s better but it’s only a couple degrees, so almost insignificant.
I used MX4 for about 5 years and it didn’t dry out at all.
I’m sure you can use it 8 years or longer, although with some performance loss.
Replace the thermal paste every few years if you want the best performance possible, but it’s not a big deal unless it’s a very powerful computer or flashlight.
I have a early Nitro 5 (extremely similar to your Predator) using MX-4 paste and it’s doing great. With a slight CPU undervolt, it didn’t seem to throttle much even with both Prime95 and Unigine Heaven benchmarks running at the same time, which is impressive for how small the cooling system is. From what I’ve read, laptops have lower mounting pressure and contact area than desktop systems, so the best thermal paste for a desktop CPU might not be the ideal one for a laptop CPU. Particularly, “runny” thermal pastes might slowly “pump out” of the CPU-heatsink contact area and you’ll lose performance over time. NT-H1 especially, along with Kryonaut and even MX-4 to a more limited extent, aren’t ideal for laptops from my research. Do a Google search for one of these along with “pump out” and judge for yourself.
Ultimately though, which thermal compound you use shouldn’t matter that much. Blowing years of dust off my heatsink like you did and changing aging fans helped my laptop thermals far more than replacing thermal compound ever did. Even if other ones offer slightly better performance, the best thermal compound is the one you already have.
If you believe it, of course. O:)