CPU thermal "Sticker"??

[Alabastine]

Hello Everyone!

So since I recently noticed the temps on my 4,5 year old thinkpad CPU are getting very high, I am going to replace the thermal compound between the cooler and the CPU and GPU.
I watched a couple of youtube videos on how to do this, but since I have an old redundant Fujitsu Siemens Amilo laptop lying around (from 2004 I believe), I decided to first open this one up and replace its thermal compound to see what I was up to IRL without any real risk.
So when I removed the cooler of the Fujitsu laptop, I saw something odd, there is a reflective sticker on the bottom of the cooler, about 0.1-0.3 mm thick. On the CPU itself there seems to be some other substance than the thermal compound I have seen in the videos. Picture are provided below.

Now I have 2 questions:
- Do I need to remove the sticker and other substance, then apply thermal compound? Or should I leave it as is?
- Can I expect this sticker on my Thinkpad CPU cooler, or is it something from yay back?

Thanks in advance for any answers!

 

[n0ns3ns3]

1 mobile CPUs can easily hit 100C under load. that's fine.
2 different laptops use different cooling solutions. the CPU will usually go with thermal paste. a low power GPU can be with thermal pad.

I really do not recommend doing so unless you are prepared to take the risk of bricking the laptop.

 

[Eximo]

They may have add a little gap to make up and used a hard TIM sheet. I would use thermal compound myself, but since this isn't your target to actually do the replacement just take the other one apart.

Replace thermal compound with thermal compound. Re-use or replace thermal pads (you can get thermal pad sheets from many e-tailers)

Even if a laptop CPU can reach 100C, no reason to let it. Thermal compound is the easiest way to reduce temperatures in a laptop. The factory workers certainly aren't thorough when they do it, or too thorough with excess globs all over the place. A high quality paste applied with care in a laptop can reduce temps as much as 10C. Especially doing an older laptop.

 

[Alabastine]

1 mobile CPUs can easily hit 100C under load. that's fine.
2 different laptops use different cooling solutions. the CPU will usually go with thermal paste. a low power GPU can be with thermal pad.

I really do not recommend doing so unless you are prepared to take the risk of bricking the laptop.

Thanks for the info! But I am still going to do this. At idle (only running HWiNFO to motitor temps) my CPU seems to settle at about 64 degrees C and when playing a low spec game like Mount&Blade Warband my CPU gets up to 100 degrees C and starts to thermothrottle. These are very high temperatures compared to what I've read online. Plus I have read that replacing the thermal compound after 3-5 years is a good idea. I want to thoroughly clean my cooling fins as well which will require me to remove the cooler, so I'd have to replace the compound anyway.
I am also pretty confident I can do this without causing any damage. Do you know what could cause the laptop to brick when doing this? Because to me it seems to be a very unlikely risk.

You also mentioned low power GPUs can go with a thermal pad, but in the old laptop (the pictures) this is definitively the CPU since is does not have a dedicated GPU. Something from the old days I suspect?

 

[Eximo]

Every internal laptop configuration is a little different. Wherever they could save money or were fixing a manufacturing or engineering defect you will see odd things.

Pretty hard to brick a laptop taking it apart and putting it back together. I would caution to check for possible pinch points on any wires and make sure that doesn't happen, as a dead short somewhere might damage a system. Loose screws.

Most common risk would be broken plastic molded clips and some of the more tiny and finicky connectors. If you avoid that type of damage, you should be good to go.

 

[Alabastine]

Every internal laptop configuration is a little different. Wherever they could save money or were fixing a manufacturing or engineering defect you will see odd things.

Pretty hard to brick a laptop taking it apart and putting it back together. I would caution to check for possible pinch points on any wires and make sure that doesn't happen, as a dead short somewhere might damage a system. Loose screws.

Most common risk would be broken plastic molded clips and some of the more tiny and finicky connectors. If you avoid that type of damage, you should be good to go.

Thanks! But I still wonder what the weird "goo" on the old CPU is, do you have any idea?
Since I have an I7-3610QM in my thinkpad I suspect they just used thermal compound in that one, so it's not really relevant, but I'd still like to know haha.

 

[Eximo]

Kind of hard to tell, it looks like a really thick thermal pad from the top. But also looks like it might be a piece of thin copper mounted on a thermal sponge. I've seen Mylar-like thermal pads in tablets and smartphones on occasion. And grounding sponge, but nothing quite like that.

Probably just a cheap solution for a relatively low power, at the time, chip.

Intel® Celeron® M Processor 340 (512K Cache, 1.50 GHz, 400 MHz FSB) uFCPGA

TDP 24.5W

 

[Alabastine]

Kind of hard to tell, it looks like a really thick thermal pad from the top. But also looks like it might be a piece of thin copper mounted on a thermal sponge. I've seen Mylar-like thermal pads in tablets and smartphones on occasion. And grounding sponge, but nothing quite like that.

Probably just a cheap solution for a relatively low power, at the time, chip.

Intel® Celeron® M Processor 340 (512K Cache, 1.50 GHz, 400 MHz FSB) uFCPGA

TDP 24.5W

Nice, thank you, I love your dedication in actually finding and stating the specs of this processor haha.
Cheers mate.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

relax - here are the almost 80C at almost idle on Macbook Pro 2015.
You probably have the T or W series thinkpad - great machines.
The CPU inside your machine is REAL QUAD core i7 with 45watt TDP.
mine is dual core i7 with some 15watt.
Do not try to compare mobile temperatures to desktops.

 

[Alabastine]

relax - here are the almost 80C at almost idle on Macbook Pro 2015.
You probably have the T or W series thinkpad - great machines.
The CPU inside your machine is REAL QUAD core i7 with 45watt TDP.
mine is dual core i7 with some 15watt.
Do not try to compare mobile temperatures to desktops.

Yeah I've got the T530 and I love it. I recently swapped an SSD in there and now it can still trape punches with the newer laptops. However today I am going to install an eGPU setup using an RX 470 (cuz the internal GPU sucks) and I want to get every bit of performance I can get from the CPU when I start gaming on it.
And I believe thermal compound will improve performance a bit after all these years.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

cleaning the fins on the heatsink might help. replacing thermal paste most probably will not.
those ThinkPad laptops come with decent TIM that last for ages.
I have owned few of them starting x31, x41, x61, x201, x220

 

[Alabastine]

I completed the operation and the differences are immense, max temps while playing M&B Warband dropped from 100C to 60C. Temps at idle from 64C to 45-50C.
I dont know if this is because of the thermal paste tho, since my laptop was completely suffocating, look at this junk!

 

[n0ns3ns3]

removing dust made the difference

 

[Alabastine]

removing dust made the difference

Well, most of it for sure. But I noticed the factory went quite thick with the compound and I used a very well tested replacement compound so I think this made a difference as well. But regardless, in order to remove the dust I had to remove the heatsink, so I would have had to replace the compound anyway.