Cooler in Acer Aspire 3 laptoprecently bought a second hand model N19C1

Gabethebabe

Hi all, newbie alert!

I recently bought a second hand Acer Aspire 3, model N19C1 and the first thing I did was open it up to review the interior and replace factory thermal paste, because that's what good geeks do.

This is the CPU - an Intel i5 10210U.

This is the cooler. As you see the left secondary cooling area isn't touched at all by the cooler and also didn't have any thermal paste or pad. The copper arm was just floating above the CPU

I have opened quite a few laptops previously and never seen this before. The cooler always touches both cooling areas.

What I did is put a 0.5mm thermal pad on top of it, touching the copper and thereby providing some kind of additional dissipation.

Question: this is standard? A known issue? A freak ocurrence?

[Edited the title to add model name ]

JackE

>>>As you see the left secondary cooling area isn't touched at all by the cooler and also didn't have any thermal paste or pad>>>

Best for CPU to be pasted to heatsink, No pad. Secondary surrounding chips don't need such intimate heatsink contact. Especially if it interferes with or otherwise compromises CPU/heatsink intimacy