[SOLVED] Should I replace the thermal paste in my laptop?

[BKsniperguy]

I have a cheap Toshiba Satellite L-50 series laptop (not sure which one but it has an i5-4200u and a gt 740m with a 700ish gb HDD and 4gb of DDR3, upgraded to 8gb). With firefox open the CPU idles at around 60 degrees celcius while the GPU idles at 63-66. I have windows 10 installed. These temps would look concerning on a desktop, and they still seem somewhat worrying. This with the laptop flat on a wooden desk. I would turn the fans up, but speedfan doesn't detect any fans and neither does msi afterburner (even though I can hear the fan change speed). Should I bother changing the thermal paste in hopes of reducing temps? How bad is the risk that I may damage the CPU/GPU by scratching it?

 

[jay32267]

Those temps are fine and not damaging anything.
With a laptop....you can get quite a bit hotter than that without issue.
Check your temps while you are running your most system heavy game or app and see what they are.
Then decide what to do.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

I have a cheap Toshiba Satellite L-50 series laptop (not sure which one but it has an i5-4200u and a gt 740m with a 700ish gb HDD and 4gb of DDR3, upgraded to 8gb). With firefox open the CPU idles at around 60 degrees celcius while the GPU idles at 63-66. I have windows 10 installed. These temps would look concerning on a desktop, and they still seem somewhat worrying. This with the laptop flat on a wooden desk. I would turn the fans up, but speedfan doesn't detect any fans and neither does msi afterburner (even though I can hear the fan change speed). Should I bother changing the thermal paste in hopes of reducing temps? How bad is the risk that I may damage the CPU/GPU by scratching it?

If you have the laptop flat on your desk, there is very little air getting into the intakes, which your fans circulate around the internal of the chassis to keep components cool. Look out for a laptop cooling pad. This will help you raise the rear of the laptop up, increase airflow, and along with the fans on the laptop cooler, should keep your temps much lower. You can test the idea by placing a book at the back of your laptop underneath and see if the temps drop a degree or two. If they do a laptop cooling pad might be enough.

In terms of the thermal paste. That's a difficult one. Of course you can do it, and I'd recommend re-pasting as the thermal paste used by manufacturers is bog standard, often not very good quality. However, it's tricky to do, and without having done it before, you risk damaging the laptop. But, if you follow a guide like this one:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wGb4Bi0pWQ
you may be able to do it.

Keeping the fans clean is also a huge factor. As the dirtier and dustier they get the harder it is for the fans to spin, and for the heat to get pushed out of the system.