Preface#
The laptop was running very hot, so I decided to do a CPU stress test and found that all cores were running at 3.3 GHz (base frequency is 3.2 GHz) with a temperature of 93°. The cooling performance was terrible, and it has been almost a year since I bought it, so I thought it was a good time to replace the thermal paste. I bought a tube of Arctic MX series thermal paste.
Start#
Got the thermal paste! Let's get started~
Restart the laptop and enter the BIOS to set the battery to maintenance mode.
Open up the laptop. There are only two long screws on the Lenovo Xiaoxin, while the rest are short screws. Just be careful during installation. Gently pry open the entire bottom shell from the air vent. Then, disconnect the battery cable and don't worry about the glue on the connector. Just pull it out gently without applying too much force.
Next, remove the thermal pad and unscrew the three screws (for the integrated graphics). Gently lift up the heatsink, and there it is. I noticed that some of the heat dissipation holes were completely blocked, which explains why cleaning the fan didn't help.
Use a tissue to clean off the old thermal paste from the CPU. After cleaning the heatsink, apply a new layer of thermal paste in a cross pattern and use a small plastic card to spread it evenly. If you can't ensure a perfect fit between the heatsink and the CPU, it's recommended to apply a thicker layer. Even if the excess thermal paste spills over to the nearby capacitors when the heatsink is pressed down, it's still better than having air gaps that affect heat dissipation. Generally, thermal paste is not conductive, but of course, conductive thermal paste is usually more expensive.
Put the heatsink back in place, screw it in, and pay attention not to tighten the bottom-left screw too much. This screw is attached to the motherboard, and if it falls off, it will be more trouble than it's worth. You'll need to have some welding skills to fix it. Do a quick check to make sure nothing is missing, and if everything looks good, reconnect the battery cable. Then, put the top cover back on and screw it in.
End#
In conclusion, cleaning and replacing thermal paste on laptops that don't have an inverted motherboard design is relatively simple. For some models with an inverted motherboard, it can be more complicated, as you'll need to remove the motherboard (which can be risky for inexperienced users, as they may not know where all the screws are located). However, I still want to buy the thermal paste used by Lenovo (Honeywell PTM7950SP) because according to some knowledgeable folks, it provides much more stable and long-lasting performance compared to Arctic MX. Recently, I found that the cooling performance of Arctic MX (MX series) is not very stable, and it seems to be gradually deteriorating.
Continued#
I bought the Honeywell PTM7950SP from a Geek Temperature Control store on Taobao. This product, like Shinetsu 7921, is mainly targeted at the OEM market and not available in the retail market. So, I was worried about getting a counterfeit product. The seller strongly advised against buying Shinetsu 7921, saying that it doesn't perform as well as Honeywell PTM7950SP on thin and light laptops due to its poor durability and limited heat dissipation space. As soon as I received it, I replaced the Arctic MX with the Honeywell PTM7950SP. The Arctic MX turned out to be a waste of money and falsely advertised!
Start#
End#
Wear a finger cot on the middle finger and press the thermal paste with your fingertip to spread it evenly across the entire CPU surface!
Done! The battle is over. This thermal paste really works well, much better than Arctic MX (MX series), which falsely claims to have good cooling performance. Now, I can achieve a full-core turbo frequency of 4.0 GHz with a temperature of 61° (after two minutes), and in Genshin Impact, I can achieve a full-core frequency of 3.9 GHz with a temperature of 71°. The Arctic MX is just garbage.