Installing fresh thermal compound on Laptop: Which preapplied material should I remove?

Brendan McCoy

Honorable
Jan 7, 2015
2
0
10,510
So I purchased a replacement motherboard and heatsink for an old laptop I received from a friend as a "if you fix it you can have it" sort of deal. I bought a motherboard with a different GPU configuration which necessitated the different heatsink.

I plan to remove the compound from where the heatsink contacts the CPU and GPU, as well as Intel chipset, and to use my own thermal compound instead. I was wondering if I should also remove the thermal pads that contact the VRAM modules and some other onboard chip (it says "1r029fl7") and use thermal compound instead.

I have concerns mainly with whether these pads are necessary for a tight fit/seal between the parts and the heatsink. I'm very confident in my experience with installing thermal compound (mainly with desktop PCs), but this is my first time installing onto a laptop.

I've made an Imgur album better illustrating what I'm working with, that can be found here: http://imgur.com/a/v5OAk