
Classic ThinkPad Thermal Paste Change - zdw
https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/06/30/classic-thinkpad-thermal-paste-change/
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cameronperot
I replaced the single pipe heatsink on my T490 for one with dual heat pipes as
the single couldn't sufficiently cool the CPU (was hitting 97C out of the box
and after several re-pastes). So I set out on a journey to find a good thermal
paste to use. However, finding a good thermal paste for laptops (more
specifically on die usage) isn't as straightforward as one would think. A lot
of the high end thermal pastes work best for desktop use, i.e. between a
heatsink and an IHS, whereas on laptops you don't have an IHS so it's between
the heatsink and the die. These high end thermal pastes usually all succumb to
the same problem called the pump-out effect [1], where after a number of
thermal cycles the performance of the paste begins to fall and it needs to be
re-pasted.

I ended up going with Prolimatech PK-3 as it's a fairly viscous thermal paste,
and it has held up well for the past six months. Although, I have noticed
slightly higher max temperatures than when I originally applied it, but
nothing alarming.

[1]
[https://www.overclock.net/forum/28099300-post10.html](https://www.overclock.net/forum/28099300-post10.html)

~~~
DiabloD3
I ended up going with Thermal Grizzly's Kryonaut when I repasted my MBP (Apple
does such a horrible job on their own). Due to how thick it is, pump-out
basically can't happen. It's the thickest paste on the market.

It's designed for sub-zero overclocking (thus, the name), and has thinner
siblings, but I chose it specifically how thick it is, and how it has no
curing time. Sub-zero overclocks has the worst pump-out effect due to the vast
range of temps you can travel.

The pump-out on my MBP with stock paste was absolutely absurd (hardly any
paste left on the dies, almost entirely shoved to the very edges of it), but
given the past year, it has had less thermal degredation than my tube AS5
historically has (which is near-zero, I just have to repaste it every 5-8
years, or "once per life of device").

Apple's own paste didn't survive 3 years, or basically went to shit right
after Applecare ended. Suspect this is on purpose, but, obviously, can't prove
that.

Edit: By the way, thicker pastes require a little bit more pressure to get
good contact. I suggest everyone get a torque screwdriver that can be set to
0.6 Nm/5-6 lbf to screw their heatsink retaining screws on.

Intel and AMD have pretty consistent recommendations, as do GPU manufactures,
and they range from 0.8 to 1.2 maximum. 0.6 is enough to not risk
overtightening, and is also enough to make thicker pastes happy; 0.6 is also
Noctua's universal recommendation.

Also, Arctic Cooling's MX4 is another popular thick paste (usually for GPUs,
not CPUs, seems to be more consistent on large dies) that likes high pressure
mounts.

~~~
awakeasleep
Any readers understand how the pump out effect works?

In my imagination, it seems like the less paste you have between whatever is
emitting heat, and the heat sink, the better- so long as there aren't air
gaps.

I see there are many forum posts where people show that it does not, but it
feels like the closer proximity of the heat sink to the hot object should
_improve_ conduction!

~~~
sp332
If the heatsink expands a bit and pushes the paste out, then when it cools and
contracts it will pull away and leave a gap.

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ksec
>Those who know me know that I am a bit fan of the oldschool Lenovo ThinkPad
laptops

May be just me, as I was expecting oldschool to be _IBM_ Thinkpad.

Anyway you could get $100+ worth of performance simply by using better thermal
paste. Unfortunately most Laptop Vendors refuse to do it for whatever reason.
May be it is trade off between how long the paste would last?

And while we have trillion dollar worth of silicon improvement in the last
decade, are there any recent innovation in thermal paste or thermal cooling?

~~~
kube-system
Moving heat around is pretty well understood science. Heat pipes are probably
the most recent innovation, in that we started using them about 20 years ago
in PCs, although they've existed in other applications for 50-60 years.

Regardless of how well you move heat around, all heat is waste. If the goal of
better cooling is better mobility, then your bigger limiting factor is that
you don't have sufficient battery technology to afford wasting that energy as
heat, not that you don't have the technology to sufficiently cool the device.
The best innovations in cooling _are_ the improvements in silicon. In the past
decade, we now have commonplace consumer PCs that don't need active cooling at
all.

30 years from now we're going to look back at the people who tried really hard
to cool their silicon better like the people who tried really hard to make
their vacuum tubes last longer.

~~~
ksec
>In the past decade, we now have commonplace consumer PCs that don't need
active cooling at all.

Agree and fair enough. We are going to see an iPad Pro with 5nm SoC that will
be ridiculously fast.

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rlpb
I have resurrected almost every laptop I've ever owned by replacing the
thermal paste and removing dust clogging up the heatsink.

There's also longevity to consider. I'm not aware of any reviews that test
what the best thermal paste is after five years of thermal cycling.

~~~
vermaden
I was not able to find tests after long period of time but most places
recommend replacing the thermal paste after 2-3 years of use.

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glaberficken
Like OP I also have a t420s. It always had overheating issues. A few months
after purchase, back in 2012, I even sent if for warranty repair because it
routinely got "too hot to touch" and the fan kept going at insane speeds and
the CPU throttling. My version only has an integrated GPU (Intel HD3000). When
it came back from warranty I guess they replaced the thermal paste and
installed some better Fan driver or something. The laptop still overheats on
heavy loads occasionally but I have used it ever since (I can only spend on a
new laptop every 10 years max).

This year (2020) I completely dissembled it and replaced the thermal paste
with new good quality one. It still overheats and throttles.

Back then (2012) I chose this laptop mostly going on ThinkPad reputation for
easy upgradeability/ repairability. Boy did I get unlucky... what a bad
choice. It's the hardest laptop to disassemble I have ever had the displeasure
to work on. To get to the fan assembly you literally have to remove every
other component.

In retrospect the reason for this is obvious. The t420s was supposed to be a
slim version of the t420 (which by then was already considered thick as a
tank). I guess in a away the t420s was Lenovo's first attempt at a proper slim
portable laptop. Unfortunately for me the result was a slim, hard to
disassemble, short battery life, overheating mess...

~~~
totetsu
I changed the fan and heatsink unit in my HP elitebook convertible tablet
thing. I also had to remove every other component. Never did get Bluetooth
back afterwards.

~~~
glaberficken
Similar! I never got the SD card reader working again... I ended up taking the
whole thing out and leaving an extra gap for improved airflow.

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Jonnax
Does thermal paste expire?

I've got a P51 that's 2 years old now I think.

The fan is always on max. And it's hot, like I wouldn't wear shorts and put it
on my lap hot.

Or perhaps there's another cause?

~~~
eumenides1
Does thermal paste expire? Yes and no.

The manufacture paste isn't supposed to expire and is designed for a long long
life (5-10 years). That said, pump-out still happens.

Pump out is the result of thousands of thermal cycles of the heat source and
the heat destination on the thermal interface material.

You might be able to fix your problem by replacing the thermal paste, but
caveat is that "performance" thermal paste is MORE susceptible to pump-out and
would need to be replace more frequently.

Manufactures choose "less performant" thermal pastes because they have
longevity. You don't tell users to re-paste their CPUs on a year/bi-yearly
basis.

DIY people choose the "performant" options because benchmarks happen only on
the first day and non-performance means it's time to upgrade.

For you, replacing the thermal paste will improve the transfer of heat to the
heat sink, but if your CPU/GPU generates more heat than the system can get rid
of, it's MAX fan time. It's really a function of efficient your system is at
generating and dissipating heat and what you are doing on the laptop.

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m0xte
I've had to do this on much newer thinkpads. The fan on my T470 was on
constantly until I went in there and found that the manufacturer applied paste
was done badly. Grr.

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ayeung
This is just my experience, but I had observed a wild temperature difference
at idle and load on two identical MacBook Pros.

I’d already recently (within days) replaced the thermal paste with the same
paste but still one of them was getting 10-15 deg C hotter.

The one that was cooler had been through AppleCare and it appears the copper
surface had been scratched up intentionally as well as some dents on the fins.

The worse performing heat sink looked immaculate aside from some dust over the
years. The copper surface was polished smooth.

Just for the heck of it I swapped the heat sinks and now the temps were
reversed.

In the end I figured maybe the heat pipes were damaged or there was some
performance differences of the heat pipes during manufacturing.

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TheSpiceIsLife
I recently used Sex Wax surfboard wax til I could get to the local electronics
store to buy proper thermal paste.

~~~
jmiserez
Does that not simply melt at high temps?

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TheSpiceIsLife
When I pulled it apart to replace the wax with thermal paste I was surprised
to discover the wax hadn’t even full melted.

Didn’t really put it under any load though, just installed Windows, drivers,
and some software :)

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zoomablemind
> If this is a sponsored blog entry? Unfortunately not, but maybe in the
> future …

Still, somehow the article reads like a promo for that paste.

I was curious whether the original factory paste indeed gets older to such
degree that it causes the overheating. Instead, the only mentioning was that
the old paste came off easily.

I replaced the paste on a few old ThinkPads. Mostly because I was
cleaning/replacing the fan. For paste I used some no-name white goo, the kind
you get in those pill-sized squeeze pouches. Usual procedure, nothing special,
just wiped off the old thin layer; nothing crusty or peeling old paste. Other
as old ThinkPads hum along well without any re-pasting.

Perhaps, this story is just a case of reseating the fan and reapplying the
paste, than ThinkPad paste got old.

~~~
dijit
Paste certainly does have a shelf-life. The stuff they use in the factory even
on modern laptops optimises longevity over performance- that’s why you get
thermal benefits by re-pasting new laptops.

But the paste still ages and dries out, even liquid metal will age (by virtue
of it eating the metal of the heatsink over time).

Good rule of thumb is repaste after 4 years if it’s a factory paste, and every
18 months if it’s an aftermarket performance paste (like arctic silver).

It will still perform decently; it’s not like your machine will die, but it’s
not ideal.

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flobosg
Last weekend I replaced the motherboard of my i5 x220 and took the chance to
change thermal paste with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. I cannot say how it is
performing since I'm only using the laptop with a minimal Debian installation
in tty mode but everything seems ok so far.

My next project is to replace the fan/heatsink of my i7 x220 with the x230
one, which is supposed to be just as efficient but noticeably quieter.

~~~
rasz
Why not replace whole bottom part with x230 one?

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flyinghamster
I have a couple of X201 Tablets that I picked up cheap a few years ago, and
they could definitely use this. Running BOINC/Rosetta@Home, they often get
into the high 90s.

I should have thought about thermal paste - these machines don't have clogged
fans.

~~~
amiga-workbench
I'm using liquid metal on my X201 tablet and it still hits about 80-85c under
full load.

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debbiedowner
Laptop wise I've changed the paste on 2 macbook pros and 1 macbook. 2/3 times
CPU throttling got better. I will probably never do it again, smartest move is
to buy a new laptop and sell the old one on ebay.

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zhte415
As much as I'm dismayed at Reddit's recent purge, there's also
[https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/](https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/) for
some good ThinkPad support.

