Solved Connecting GPU to heat sink with Thermal Paste in a laptop.

Hello and thank you for any advice provided.

I'm not new to computers, but I am now delving more heavily into the world of hardware modification/optimization, etc. and fear I may have made a substantial mistake on my laptop.

I have entered my system specs, but the primary issue is that I was sure the thermal paste needed to be replaced on my CPU, so I disassembled the unit and resolved this.

The question is regarding the GPU. There was no, and appears to never have been any thermal paste connection to the heat sink. Instead there was some type of pad, sort of a rubber/foam type piece between the two. Foolishly I didn't ask first and I made the GPU/Heat Sink connection with thermal paste. About half way through reassembly, I had the thought that perhaps that pad was in place not to conduct heat away from the processor, but rather to keep heat away from it.

Currently the laptop is functional because I've only booted it up to verify that it works until I could get advice on whether or not I've made an impetuous mistake. In this condition, with no gaming or substantial processes running, the CPU is at about 110F and the GPU went up to roughly 150F.

I rely heavily on this laptop, so any information will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

What paste are you using?How much did you apply?I put thermal on my GPU also & never had any problems.I play metro 2033 on my laptop in my sys specs.I been using AS5.It's ok,but takes 200hrs runtime before it's fully broken in.You should not apply more then a grain of rice to each(cpu,gpu,south bridge).I was going to leave the thermal pad(foam piece) on my gpu but it was extremely thin & flaked to pieces.
Most will tell you the drop & screw is best method.Which I agree it's easier.But I do the drop & smear with cc method.It is a little more difficult,but imo it works better.Just got to make sure the thermal is even & theirs no air pockets.If your GPU is really getting to 60C/150F at idle.Your room must be hot,applied to much or to little thermal on the GPU,or maybe you got a hot setup.Some laptops just run hotter then others.
My acer runs 43-49C usually.Maxes at 60C on full load.

Thanks for the response.

I used Arctic Silver carefully with the drop and smear method on the CPU as I've done before, but on the GPU I used the drop method, however it was more than a grain of rice size because the GPU sits lower than the CPU. What I did was cut out the impression of the GPU in the foam type piece and inserted the paste so that it contacted the heat sink tube.

The location is in my basement which is not a hot location, so I don't believe that to be an issue. I'm not a PC gamer or overclocker, so based on your reply, I either applied way too much, or should not have applied any at all. I have read that HP's typically do run hot though.

The reason they use those thermal pads is because in some laptops there is a small difference in the height between the cpu and the gpu as much as 2mm, plus the termal pad is not an electrical conductor. Some folks like to suggest using copper shims and you can buy these cheap but then copper is also an electrical conductor and you would also need to use a termal paste and both of these can cause problems. In short, it is best to use the thermal pads if that is what was on there.

Thank you both for the input.

mgp1964 - I had a feeling that this would be the case and appreciate the answer.

Happy 2012!