Question Thermal Throttling after repasting Dell 7559 laptop ?

[theSnoopWouldDroop]

About 2 weeks ago I notice frame drops of around 30 - 90 sec on my laptop:

Dell 7559

i7 6700HQ
GTX-960M
16 GB RAM
1 TB SATA SSD
2TB HDD (6 Years Old)

Checked the temps in XTU and they were over 80C, sometimes even close to 90C. On top of that,
there was Power Limit Throttling.

Since it has been about half a year since I cleaned/repasted my laptop, I did just that. Cleaned out all the dust, prepared the thermal surfaces, and changed all the paste/pads (the pads are thicker than the ones provided by the manufacturer, but I used them last time too, so don't know if they could be an issue). This time, I noticed some other component with a metal cover. It was some kind of chip (my guess - a motherboard controller or something), It had a thermal pad under the cover, I switched it to thermal paste (Arctic MX4, for GPU and CPU as well).

After I put all the things back, I ran a stress test in XTU and the temps barely even reached 70C. So I load up my usual game (War Thunder), no sudden prolonged FPS drops, but now the average FPS dropped from around 40 to around 30. Check XTU again, and now it is thermal throttling, but at around 45-55C (guessing it is the VRM overheating), and it even starts right when I load the game in (happens in CIV6 too). The GPU temps and clocks are all fine (stable clock speeds and 67-72C temps).

I thought that I might have messed something up, so I did the whole thing again, even looked up videos of the disassembly just to make sure that I have all the thermal pads in place (that chip is now back on a thermal pad instead of paste). The same problem persists.

What are my options? Is it something that can be fixed easily? Is it software? Or is it the VRM components running their course and I need to replace them (I can solder, but my skill is pretty lackluster and I have never dealt with on-board soldering)?

Any help is appreciated.

PS: Oh, and now the 3.5mm jack is not working alongside the speakers, even though they worked for a day after the last reassembly and then suddenly went dead on me lol
Also, I pulled out my battery before the first repasting as it was already almost dead and I thought that I would help cool things down a bit and the power supply would not need to charge the battery and leave more for GPU/CPU

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

You have to put that pad back on that unidentified chip. It is not making contact with the cooler using paste.

 

[theSnoopWouldDroop]

You have to put that pad back on that unidentified chip. It is not making contact with the cooler using paste.

Hi, I checked the chip cooling and turns out I put back a pad in after the second reassembly (I'll update the question).
Still, made sure it is clean, put a new pad on it, and ensure proper contact with the cooling surface. Still, XTU says Thermal Throttling is on while the CPU is at around 50C.
Interesting things I noticed:

• HWiNFO is not showing any Thermal Throttling, but
• HWiNFO is showing the following as Yes: IA: PROCHOT, IA: Max Turbo Limit, GT: Fuses limit, RING: Max VR Voltage, ICCmax, PL4 (don't know if this is normal, left it here just in case)
• The fans are not spinning at full blast (usually when gaming, they kick in at full RPM a minute or two after launching the game)
• When opening HWiNFO Fan Control (or just setting the RPM manually at MAX), the fans spin full throttle for around 6 seconds and then go back to low RPM. I kept pressing "set manual" for the fans to spin at max but even then thermal throttling didn't go away. (I have tried manual fan control on this laptop in the past, but it does not seem to work)

The GPU continues to behave normally

Also, how safe is that script you linked?

 

[theSnoopWouldDroop]

This is weird, I put the battery back, and now the problem is almost gone. Only occasional split-second thermal throttling (still would like to fix that), but now a new problem has emerged.

While the sound is playing through headphones (wired connection), almost every few seconds I hear some static spikes (kind of like someone is wiggling the headphone jack, or when you get an SMS and you have speakers near your phone, or like when you get a static shock with your headphones on).
Could this be a power supply issue? It is as old as the laptop itself (6 years old) and I use the laptop almost exclusively as a PC, always plugged in.