Acer 5552 thermal pad size?

[Ndagger]

Hi guys.
After repairing an acer 5552 with Intel turion cpu I need some advice regarding thermal pads.
The heatsink unit contacts the cpu gpu and chipset, the cpu and gpu had paste on it which I can replace, the chipset however had a small square of what I assume is a thermal pad.
I've no idea what thickness this is as stock so am not sure what to replace it with, I'm guessing as it's a pad out of the factory rather than paste the gap is to big for paste but have no idea of the thickness of pad to order

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Acer 5552 thermal pad size?

Turion is AMD CPU, not intel. I suggest replacing the thermal pad with a copper shim of 1mm thickness, using thermal paste on both sides. Otherwise it is only a matter of time before the chipset fails. You only have to do this for the northbridge (closer to CPU, with the larger square die), the southbridge (smaller rectangular die) is not prone to failure and you can keep the factory yellow thermal pad on that.

[Ndagger]

Re: Acer 5552 thermal pad size?

Thanks for the reply.
Please see the picture I've attached.
The chip nearest the dimm slots had the thermal pad on it, the cpu and the chip (gpu?) At the top.of the pic had thermal paste.

So you advise use paste on the 2 that were factory pasted and use a shim on the one nearest the dimm slots?

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Acer 5552 thermal pad size?

The chip next to the DIMM slots is the southbridge and you can reuse the factory pad. The one at the top is the northbridge/IGP (integrated graphics), that is what you should shim. If it had paste on it it has likely been cleaned and repasted at some point, i've done dozens of those and they always came with grey, brittle thermal pads that break in a hundred pieces when you remove them.

Just remembered, use 0.5mm copper shim for that, 1mm is too thick. If it had paste on it without a shim that wasn't really optimal, there is a gap there so you need more paste to fill it, thus worse thermal transfer.

[Ndagger]

Re: Acer 5552 thermal pad size?

If I'm ordering a couple of shims would it be wise to stick one on the southbridge too rather than re use the old pad?

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Acer 5552 thermal pad size?

Sure you can do that, but i have never seen a failed AMD southbridge, except when some dickhead reflowed every BGA on the board.