Arctic Silver or Ceramique for a thick layer?

mobiusgear1

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My Dell m1530 laptop has a pretty crummy heatsink that simply doesnt sit flush with the CPU no matter what. So, the proper application of a tissue thin layer is not possible. What I get is mismatching core temperatures at high temps simply because there is no contact on half the chip. We are talking like 8-10C, which isnt so bad but its completely unnecessary. Literally, when I do a contact test only half the chip makes contact. I need to put on a thicker layer than what would normally be needed and I wanted to know if Arctic Silver is still the winner in such a case? I wont be all sloppy about it, so the inert property of ceramique isnt so important for me.

Which paste performs better as application gets thicker?
 
Solution


Then probably the AS5 will work better than the Ceramique in that situation.
Yeah is it possible to tweak the heat sink?

More thermal compound will make it worse not better, thermal compound in excess acts more like an insulator than a conductor of the heat.

My old laptop had heat pipes that went from the CPU heat sink to the rear cooling fan and a slight careful bending tweak got better contact, I stress doing this very carefully if its possible at all.
 

mobiusgear1

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Well, thats the type of heatsink it is, a pipe system. This IS the replacement heatsink btw, the third one actually. None of them sit right, its just a terrible design. The factory application had a magnificent blob of paste on there. With bending and all the like, I have gotten it to this point where a thin layer gets you half contact. Otherwise, a thin layer would get you zero contact. Anyway, its not possible to get a thin layer 100% contact imo. Im not talking about a blob either, just think paper towel rather than the recommended tissue-translucent. I mean, it cant be nearly as bad as the factory blob of generic.
 


Then probably the AS5 will work better than the Ceramique in that situation.
 
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