Acer Re-pasting confusion. AN517-51

I was unable to find myself comfortable w/ the temps of the CPU ranging 80-90degreeC and took a shot at re-pasting the CPU and GPU. I came to find that the four memory chips(?) that are surround the GPU has thick pink paste on it opposed to what I've been seeing in many YouTube videos online (they all had thermal pads on these chips). That being said, I went ahead and Arctic MX-4'd the CPU, GPU and the four chips. I'm not seeing any change in the temperature at all! I've already ordered some more paste (I've run out due to re-applying the paste multiple times to see if I was did in incorrectly) as well as some 1.0mm thermal pads for the chips. Any advice on this at all?

Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Thermal Grease Paste - 1.0 Gram
ARCTIC - Thermal Pad 50 X 1.0 mm

I'm thoroughly enjoying the laptop! I'm not taking any hits on performance running GTAV or Assetto Corsa both on higher settings, the gameplay visuals are beautiful. But when I see the CPU temps going consistently between 83-90, I just finish what I'm doing in-game and give it a break to cool off. How concerned should I be? It's a Christmas gift from the wifey!

It was purchase 12/18/19 at Best Buy on sale for $679. It's the 2019 model, model AN517-51.

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andylb

The video link below is for a teardown and repasting of your exact model
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg6nr3kAodw&t=7s

ksonghasun

My model doesn't have the easy access panels, it required me to remove the entire cover to access the CPU and GPU. Also, all videos I was able to find one YouTube have thermal pads on the memory chips. When I flipped the heat sink the first time, there was a thick pink paste on them, the CPU and GPU had a silver paste.

Garnett21B

ksonghasun said:

My model doesn't have the easy access panels, it required me to remove the entire cover to access the CPU and GPU. Also, all videos I was able to find one YouTube have thermal pads on the memory chips. When I flipped the heat sink the first time, there was a thick pink paste on them, the CPU and GPU had a silver paste.

S what did you do? I have acer nitro 5 an515-43 and the same problem. I got pink thermal paste on memory chips too. Did you apply new thermal pads? And If you did which thickness did you put and where? I've found an article about Helios gaming laptops and I found out that they use a mix of 1 and 1.5 mm pads and since the cooling system is very similar to Acer Nitro 5 I think that pads will be placed on the same way. I've reached up to 95+ c on AAA games. Have you changed thermal paste on CPU and GPU?

ksonghasun

Garnett21B said:

ksonghasun said:

My model doesn't have the easy access panels, it required me to remove the entire cover to access the CPU and GPU. Also, all videos I was able to find one YouTube have thermal pads on the memory chips. When I flipped the heat sink the first time, there was a thick pink paste on them, the CPU and GPU had a silver paste.

S what did you do? I have acer nitro 5 an515-43 and the same problem. I got pink thermal paste on memory chips too. Did you apply new thermal pads? And If you did which thickness did you put and where? I've found an article about Helios gaming laptops and I found out that they use a mix of 1 and 1.5 mm pads and since the cooling system is very similar to Acer Nitro 5 I think that pads will be placed on the same way. I've reached up to 95+ c on AAA games. Have you changed thermal paste on CPU and GPU?

I didn’t expect the pink paste so I didn’t replace it with pads but instead enough mx-4 to contact the heat sink. Results weren’t too different. Not even better. Im running it on balanced now and im comfortable with it, stays under 55degreesC and i notice no different other than a tad slower. Ill be repasting the cpu ans gpu again with grizzly kryo and the four chips with 1mm arctic pads.

404rishabh

ksonghasun said:

Garnett21B said:

ksonghasun said:

My model doesn't have the easy access panels, it required me to remove the entire cover to access the CPU and GPU. Also, all videos I was able to find one YouTube have thermal pads on the memory chips. When I flipped the heat sink the first time, there was a thick pink paste on them, the CPU and GPU had a silver paste.

S what did you do? I have acer nitro 5 an515-43 and the same problem. I got pink thermal paste on memory chips too. Did you apply new thermal pads? And If you did which thickness did you put and where? I've found an article about Helios gaming laptops and I found out that they use a mix of 1 and 1.5 mm pads and since the cooling system is very similar to Acer Nitro 5 I think that pads will be placed on the same way. I've reached up to 95+ c on AAA games. Have you changed thermal paste on CPU and GPU?

I didn’t expect the pink paste so I didn’t replace it with pads but instead enough mx-4 to contact the heat sink. Results weren’t too different. Not even better. Im running it on balanced now and im comfortable with it, stays under 55degreesC and i notice no different other than a tad slower. Ill be repasting the cpu ans gpu again with grizzly kryo and the four chips with 1mm arctic pads.

Hey did you replace the pads ? If yes, then what thickness were they ?

Karlito

Okay, so I did some research and thought of posting them here. Mine is an AN515-43. I believe it won't really matter as they would use the same chassy for all Nitro 5s irrespective of whether its Intel or AMD. The pink goo that you find on the vRAM chips is useless once you lift the heatsink for repasting. Because air gets trapped in there and it's pretty much useless then on as a heat conductor.

I am attaching a few pics trying to determine the thickness of the thermal gap filler pads Acer used. Please excuse my methodology (due to the lack of better equipment I resorted to on a borrowed scale). As you can see in the pictures the thermal pads are in general 1mm thick and after I removed the pink goo and tried pasting some Noctua NT-H1 on the chips, it's pretty much useless as there's no contact with the heatsink properly and the 'gap' is evident. Also, based on this comment from another thread (although for a Predator Helios 300) it seems someone experimented with 0.5mm & 1mm thickness pads.

In conclusion, I would suggest using a 1mm thickness pad for the vRAM chips and everything else too, other than the CPU GPU die area.

Hit a 'Like' if this helps.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/37/y11cml3wvioc.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/jf/bv7v2444juo9.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/9v/ndicivdpb8i7.jpg

mutumupret

i use 2 mm pad (i bought the wrong one) and use a 1 mm copper shim (that actually i want to use for sodimm) to fill the gap between cpu and gpu with the heatsink. and now in the 30C room my idle temperature has decreased from 68-78C to 52-57C. I use the cooler master 9 W/mk paste and generic thermal pads. later i'll try to use thermalright pad n paste combo.

Henrik_

I also got the pink paste. I just took the old pink paste from the heatsink and repasted it. Used Grizzly Kryonaut for the CPU and GPU. Idle temp is around 47-50 degrees celcius. Gaming still tops at 85-95 degrees. I have to put the laptop on top my air purifier so I can boost the airflow from beneath. Then around 65 degrees. You can find a laptop cooler on amazon that you can put the laptop on. Also putting somthing under tha back of the laptop increases the airflow and you lower the temp by a couple of degrees. Looks like alot of ppl have this temp range on the forum so guess it's hard to lower it more.

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