Replacing thermal compound. Instructions for HP Compaq laptop.

Your laptop is running hot? Maybe it’s time to replace thermal compound on the CPU. This guide will explain how you can replace thermal compound in a HP Compaq nw8240 laptop. This guide should work for many other HP laptops too.

For those wishing to make their laptop perform cooler overall, adding a high-grade thermal compound to the interface between the chip and the heat sink is a great suggestion. I use Arctic Silver 5 for my hardware, since it’s the proven best thermal paste on the market today. It seems a bit expensive for the amount you get, but it’s well worth it.

If you are having hard time removing the keyboard and accessing the processor, check out service and maintenance guide for your HP laptop (available for download on HP website). In most cases you’ll find disassembly instructions in there.

The results are quite clear – the Arctic Silver 5 helped quite a bit. It lowered the CPU temperature from 151F to 138F (66C to 59C), lowered the Local Temp from 131F to 126F (55C to 52C). The hard drive now stays cooler because there’s less heat getting trapped in the case. I’d say this is a great result for something as seemingly ineffectual as thermal paste.

You can find Arctic Silver 5 here.

By the way, if your laptop overheats and shuts down without any reason, check the heatsink. Most likely it’s clogged with dust and lint. You can clean the heatsink with compressed air.