That thermal pad on the chipset is just for show, stop ignoring it

I keep seeing repair vids where people slap a new GPU on a board but leave the chipset heatsink bare or with a crusty old pad. Last week I had a PS4 that would crash after 10 minutes, fresh thermal paste on the APU did nothing, but a 1mm pad on the southbridge fixed it instantly. How do you decide which chips actually need pads vs just air cooling?

2 comments

2 Comments

black.laura3d ago

lol yeah the "just for show" thing is so real. I had an old laptop where the chipset would hit 95c under load, slapping a 1mm pad on it dropped it to 65c and the whole thing stopped thermal throttling. People really sleep on those little guys, they're not just decorative, they can be the difference between crashing every 5 minutes and running stable all day.

dixon.ryan3d ago

Man I feel this in my SOUL. Had a laptop once where I was convinced the thermal pads were just for decoration too, so I took em out. That thing sounded like a jet engine taking off for like three days before I figured out what I did wrong.