Question Thermal paste on other components

[WuLyf]

Hello everyone,

I've had a few issues with my laptop throttling more and more these past few days and decided to open it and repaste it, but this is what I found under the heatsink (first time removing it). There seems to be thermal paste everywhere but I've never heard of pasting other components than GPU and CPU, is this normal ? Do I need to remove everything and repaste ?
This is an Asus ROG GL702VM bought 2.5 years ago

 

[Ferimer]

Did you buy it used or brand new?

 

[HWOC]

Sometimes memory chips for GPU will have thermal paste on them, as well as MOSFETs for power delivery. Also other motherboard chips often have cooling requirements as well, and in the case of laptops may be cooled by the same heatsink.
Looks like the smallest components on the top row are MOSFETs, and the chips are the far left are memory chips for the GPU.

EDIT: So, yeah, ideally you'd put on fresh paste for all of them.

 

[Karadjgne]

I've only ever seen paste on cpu/gpu chipsets as they are screwed tight to heatsink. Other chipsets will use thermal pads as there will inevitably be height/clearance differences between the different chips.

Honestly, it looks like a used unit, and the prior owner opened it up and wrecked the pads, so used paste as a substitute.

 

[WuLyf]

I bought it brand new yes. I guess I'll remove and repaste eveywhere then, wasn't expecting this much paste everywhere so I guess I'll get to it. I've got 3.5 grams of paste it still looks like I'll have enough. I hope performances will improve too, I can't get CS GO to run without lag spikes with the lower settings right now (i5-6500HQ and GTX 1060) ...

 

[digitalgriffin]

Thermal pads are typically used for accessory chips like sound, and memory, and VRMs. The reason being is they are all different heights. And they aren't all bolted down tight to the heatsink. Thermal paste is a rick anywhere in a laptop because they get moved around. If old paste gets moved around, it cracks and loses it's thermal effectiveness. Thermal pads don't conduct as well, but do better over the long term due to being a bit more "flexible" to impacts.

 

[WuLyf]

The part on the accessory chips is much easier to remove it's not something dry like the paste on CPU and GPU, it feels like it actually was some thermal pads that would have melted. Is this possible ? I bought some pads rather than to put some paste on those.

 

[HWOC]

Yes, some pads melt over time. I've seen this on OEM products many times.