[halz]

As thermal budgets get pushed with more power in smaller packages, replacing the OEM thermal paste/pad is almost becoming a standard operation. Recent AMD/Nvidia GPUs have experienced thermal throttling issues due to poor or outright missing application of the thermal interface material on RAM and GPU components.

At some point after warranty expiration, as a "hail mary", I replaced the OEM thermal paste in my Precision laptop and saw peak temperatures plummet around 20C, where it was previously bouncing off the CPU thermal throttle limits with the fans on max.

[digisign]

> I replaced the OEM thermal paste

Have a good tutorial for that?

[halz]

Sure! This old one from GamersNexus runs through some pretty good detail and even arrives at the same "20C temperature reduction" conclusion I experienced. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d42PSM0CN8g Best will be to youtube for your specific model laptop to see if there are any connectors to be particularly careful of when opening. The hardest part will be finding all of the screws to remove the bottom of the laptop. In addition to the x10 around the perimeter, my Dell has a little flap which hides two easy-to-miss screws.

And bonus, here is a bit of a theatrical conclusion to changing thermal pads on an Nvidia GPU https://youtu.be/-kPUq-q8tT8?t=410 (observed memory temperatures dropped from 110C to 70C, 40C reduction, and overall GPU performance doubled)