Question Laptop overheating issue

[kazibaka12]

Hello everyone,

I bought an Asus TUF Dash F15 around a two years ago. I've played tons of AAA games on it, but I've never faced any issues. I always monitored my temps and they hovered between 75-83 C when gaming.

About a month or two ago, I noticed an increased max temperature of 85-90 C in my CPU when playing RDR2, when it normally used to be 77 C on average. Not a few days ago I was running Alpaca (a local chatgpt-type application) which uses a massive amount of CPU and temperatures averaged 80-85 C. But when I tried running it after the overheating started, I witnessed my temp reach 100 C for the first time. Surprisingly it didn't shut down the laptop.

So I called a "specialist" to come to my house to clean up the fans and reapply the thermal paste. It should have fixed the issue, however, after he was done my temperatures were 77 C when idling, and opening up a .png file, or windows explorer made my CPU temps jump 20 C within a second upto 90-95 C momentarily, and then fall back to 75-77 C. Gaming was absolutely unbearable, with temperatures spiking upto 98 C.

I then stopped using my laptop afterwards and sent it to a local repair shop. They did a full cleanup, and mentioned that the thermal paste was incorrectly applied by my specialist. When I booted up my PC and tried running a game, I saw minimal improvement, and temperatures still spiked when trying open windows explorer. They then proceeded to do a clean windows installation and promised that would help, but it helped a little with the spiking. I noticed that when idling the temp would be around 70-73, when it normally would be 55-60 and gaming would still be a mess, with temperatures averaging 88-90 C instead of 98 C.

After this massive disappointment, I returned home, and decided to research a little more, and found out that there was a way to change the CPU from boosting itself. I had to go to the registry editor change a few values, and this option appeared in 'Power Options'

It was at Aggressive by default, I'm assuming from the time of purchase, however after disabling this, I saw a good decrease in my temperature when idling, or running quite a few tabs in firefox.

Here's what it looks like now.

However running video games (RDR2/RE4 remake), or any cpu intensive tasks make my temperatures creep upto 90-92 C even after disabling boost! When running a video game, my temperature starts at 78 C, but within minutes it slowly creeps from 80 to 81, stays there for a few seconds and then just +1 + 1 + 1 all the way upto 88 C. Especially my CPU Core#2, and the CPU Package. These two spike upto 92 C, and kinda stay there.

Here's my Realtemp summary

The craziest thing is that even games with potato graphics like Empyrion Galactic Survival can make my temps go way up, around 85 C. It just baffles me how it happens and I'm at a loss. This thing used to be a beast a few months ago, and it's just on crutches at this point. I feel like my laptop should even be able to handle the 'Processor performance boost mode' but this cooling issue is limiting it's capabilities. Please help.

 

[Misgar]

Leaving aside good or bad application technique, the critical question is what TIM (Thermal Interface Material) did all these people use), i.e. original manufacturer, so-called "expert" and local repair shop.

There are lots of arguments about what constitutes the "best" TIM.

https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/best-thermal-paste

Some people rave about liquid metals, but these can be very bad if you apply too much and a bead of metal gets on to the motherboard causing a short circuit.

Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut liquid metal works best when applied to Nickel plated surfaces. On other (bare) metal surfaces, it may start to dissolve the heatsink. Its saving grace is the much higher thermal conductivity of 73 Watt-milliKelvin, whereas the best Thermal Grizzly non-conductive paste Kryonaut is only 12.5W-mK.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...-vs-conductonaut-liquid-metal-73-w-mk.229167/

Kryonaut (12.5W-mK) is still more than twice as conductive as most other pastes, e.g. Arctic MX5 is only 6W-mK.

From the data sheets alone, I'd suggest Kryonaut or ProlimaTech PK3. In theory there should be a very obvious difference between these two pastes and "regular" pastes.

There might however be very good reasons why Kryonaut and PK3 are less suitable than lower conductivity TIMs I'm not aware of.

I suggest you ask your local repair shop what paste they used. They probably have a very good reason for choosing their brand of paste, but I hope it doesn't include being as cheap as possible.

Check out a few reviews and reach your own conclusions.

Liquid metal would probably fix the overheating, but it's difficult to apply safely. Some people paint the motherboard around the CPU socket with nail varnish, in case any droplets of liquid metal leak out.

 

[kazibaka12]

Leaving aside good or bad application technique, the critical question is what TIM (Thermal Interface Material) did all these people use), i.e. original manufacturer, so-called "expert" and local repair shop.

There are lots of arguments about what constitutes the "best" TIM.

https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/best-thermal-paste

Some people rave about liquid metals, but these can be very bad if you apply too much and a bead of metal gets on to the motherboard causing a short circuit.

Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut liquid metal works best when applied to Nickel plated surfaces. On other (bare) metal surfaces, it may start to dissolve the heatsink. Its saving grace is the much higher thermal conductivity of 73 Watt-milliKelvin, whereas the best Thermal Grizzly non-conductive paste Kryonaut is only 12.5W-mK.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...-vs-conductonaut-liquid-metal-73-w-mk.229167/

Kryonaut (12.5W-mK) is still more than twice as conductive as most other pastes, e.g. Arctic MX5 is only 6W-mK.

From the data sheets alone, I'd suggest Kryonaut or ProlimaTech PK3. In theory there should be a very obvious difference between these two pastes and "regular" pastes.

There might however be very good reasons why Kryonaut and PK3 are less suitable than lower conductivity TIMs I'm not aware of.

I suggest you ask your local repair shop what paste they used. They probably have a very good reason for choosing their brand of paste, but I hope it doesn't include being as cheap as possible.

Check out a few reviews and reach your own conclusions.

Liquid metal would probably fix the overheating, but it's difficult to apply safely. Some people paint the motherboard around the CPU socket with nail varnish, in case any droplets of liquid metal leak out.

Thank you very much for your input!