[SOLVED] Heatsink without thermal paste ?

[Edga145236]

So, I have HP Pavilion ze2000 EK798EA#ABB with AMD Sempron. After I disassemble it to change thermal paste for the first time since 2005, I found that under heatsink there is no any thermal paste. There is thermal pad for video chip, but CPU is absolutely clean. I didn't found any traces of what somebody disassembled it before me, so it was like that from the factory. My question is what the hell is that, and why it is never overheated ? There is photo on imgur:

https://imgur.com/a/vgeLJ4i

View: https://imgur.com/a/vgeLJ4i
.

 

[Eximo]

Looks like a metallic thermal pad. More recently they have been used on AMD GPUs due to the uneven nature of the HBM memory and GPU dies.

Basically no chance of it going bad.

 

[Edga145236]

So I should just leave it like that and everything will be ok ?

 

[Eximo]

Probably not. Take the pad off, remove the blue gunk (which itself is a hardening thermal pad) and apply a new thermal pad or a lot of thermal compound, I imagine it is a big gap to fill and that is the other reason they went this route.

Leave the black rectangle, that is to prevent those surface mount components from shorting to the heatsink.

 

[Edga145236]

Ok, thanks for the help.