Let me preface this by saying I had thought I fixed my thermal concerns with some mild undervolting. I was getting great temps all around, but then I noticed my CPU wasn’t clocking very high at all. Turns out I had accidentally disabled Turbo altogether without noticing...er go the great temps.
Once I re-enabled Turbo my temps were back up around where they’d been before: bouncing off 95°C with fans maxed in Cinebench. Darn.
Determined to do better, I completely reset the UV and Turbo settings and reflashed the latest BIOS to clear any residual potential weirdness. Took the laptop apart and cleaned the heatpipe assembly.
The stock paste on the VRM and RAM was still wet and usable, but the CPU/GPU paste had almost no play in it at all. It was practically baked on, and this is a brand new laptop purchased on the 14th new from BB.
Cleaned it up, repasted with CM Mastergel Maker (Side note: it used to be called Nano, and now it comes in this goofy wide mouth applicator syringe...don’t know if the formulation changed but I’ve used the older stuff on all three of my past desktop builds to great effect.), and I’m blown away with how much cooler running it is
and that’s with full Turbo and no undervolt.Before, 100% fans, with -150mV/-50mV undervolt in the much quicker Cinebench R15:
https://i.imgur.com/ieHsavM.jpgAfter, 100% fans, with no undervolt in the much longer CB R20:
https://i.imgur.com/5vrCIsG.jpgI can with full faith recommend repasting if you’re not satisfied with your temps (I know 95°C is normal and everything, but I just don’t like it). And might I suggest using a slightly thicker than normal application of high quality paste spread evenly across the entire die—worked wonders for me!!
