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?

3 comments

3 Comments

robert6411h agoProlific Poster

Hear me out, I actually skip half those thermal pads on purpose. I had a PS4 that ran perfectly for years with just a sliver of a pad on the southbridge, then I swapped it for a proper thick one and it actually ran hotter because it lifted the heatsink off the CPU. Most chipsets are designed to handle a lot of heat without pads, they're sitting at 40c or 50c normally. I've seen repair videos where people slap a pad on a chip that's already at 55c and all they do is trap more heat under the heatsink. The real issue is usually a bad solder joint or a dying cap, not a missing thermal pad.

black.laura2mo 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.ryan2mo 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.