Question Thermal clay in laptop - - - did I make the right choice by replacing it with paste ?

[Lady Morgan]

Hi everyone!

Let me start of by saying I'm not a techie, my know how on computers covers the basics, but that's about it.

Anyway, my wife and I both play games using our gaming laptops, we've been gaming this way for years and I've openened them up quite a few times for deep cleaning (we have a particularly dusty house), and replacement of thermal paste. This always worked out great.

But when opening up my wife's HP Victus I was shocked to not find thermal pads stuck to the heatsink as I'm used to with all past laptops we've owned, but clay or putty instead. Since all we had at hand is paste I cleaned it all off with alcohol and just put the paste on every part where the putty clay stuff had been.

Did I make the right choice here? Or should I go look for this putty clay and open it back up again?

Have a good day and thank you everyone!

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

HP have a number of laptop's under their Victus lineup. Which one do you have? A model and SKU would help us two fold. As for the thermal paste/pads/putty info, if the gap between surfaces is miniscule, you use thermal paste. If the gap is to large, you use thermal putty.

What thermal paste did you use?

 

[Lady Morgan]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

HP have a number of laptop's under their Victus lineup. Which one do you have? A model and SKU would help us two fold. As for the thermal paste/pads/putty info, if the gap between surfaces is miniscule, you use thermal paste. If the gap is to large, you use thermal putty.

What thermal paste did you use?

Hi! Thank you for your reply.

The laptop in question is a HP Victus Gaming 15-fb0882nd. The paste I used is something called Earkings EK-1, I think it might be off-brand but it reviewed highly and worked well on an old backup laptop of ours.

It's hard to know the distance between the sink and the parts though. But I suppose I can assume they're bigger due to the fact of putty being used in the first place.

The thermals of the laptop are pretty decent at the moment, peaking in the mid 70s (celcius) during high CPU usage in a game. Though I'm a bit scared of the long term here.

Like I said, I'd gladly open it back up and do it properly if that is advisable.

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