Acer Nitro 5 517-41 with 0.4GHz CPU after adding thermal paste.
Acer Nitro 5 517-41 with 0.4GHz CPU after adding thermal paste.
I've got a used laptop that began showing cooling problems. I cleaned the fans and replaced the old thermal paste with fresh MX4. It booted up quickly—about 5 to 7 minutes—and then all eight cores dropped to 0.4GHz. The total power draw is only around 3 watts. From a thermal standpoint, both the CPU and GPU are running just above room temperature (35-40°C). What might be causing this? I'm looking for some troubleshooting ideas.
Did you ensure the entire surface was covered evenly? If not, repeat the process, spread the paste thoroughly, and add extra dots at each corner plus one in the middle. Die coolers used in laptops generally have lower pressure, so they don’t spread thermal paste as much. It’s likely a small area isn’t fully covered, which could cause issues. Improper reapplication of thermal pads will lead to similar problems.
Reviewed the coverage—everywhere fine. Used a credit card for uniform, clear protection. Unfortunately, the thermal pads are in poor condition. Getting them near Christmas is challenging.
VRM thermal pads measure roughly 1.5mm in width with all cores cold. After extended use, clocks gradually return to normal. Package rating is 15W, but actual clocks align with base reference. BIOS lacks any performance tuning options. Acer reported this issue. Battery was removed and the same occurred. Stress test with AIDA64 showed 35W under AC and 25W on battery. It appears the system is slowly recovering, though it hasn't yet stabilized above 48W/54W.
Aida functions well, yet starting helldivers2 requires a power reset within 1-2 minutes. Likely the VRM cooling isn't sufficient, causing voltage drops under load.