Will changing the thermal paste help with the GPU chip failure? Also, "GPU Reflow".

[MamuMogambo]

My Dell Inspiron 15R 5520 had been heating up for over an year now and I didn't bother to do anything about it. Recently my GPU chip started having problems (white lines on screen and three beeps from the motherboard). My laptop now starts only after many tries. The repair guy informed me that the problem is in the GPU chip on the motherboard.
So, as a solution I came accross "GPU Reflow". Now, the basic idea is heating up the motherboard in an oven or with a heat gun. I was thinking since my laptop does start-up sometimes, I can just turn on a game and my laptop would just overheat in the same way. Although not just as hot and only for 10-15 minutes before shutting down automatically because of overheating. Will this help with the problem?
Alternatively, I was thinking of cleaning the dust inside the laptop and changing the thermal paste to stop all the over-heating. Will this help?

 

[corkyg]

Cleaning out dust can help. AFAIK, thermal paste is not involved with the GPU. It is used with the CPU. Make and model of notebook, pls. How old is it? What is the ambient room temp?

 

[Blain]

Did the repair guy actually disassemble the laptop or just give you his opinion without opening it?
If it's shutting down after a few minutes, why haven't you or the repair guy cleaned the cooling components yet?
Don't bother with trying some half-baked reflow job. Just buy a new MB (you'll end up doing that anyway).

 

[Blue_Max]

In my experience (not to be taken as gospel) once a GPU (desktop or otherwise) has been damaged by heat, no amount of cooling or underclocking will prevent the sparkles & lines from reappearing.

I'm with Blain... start poking through ebay for a replacement motherboard unless it's a replaceable MXM module.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

In my experience, not all is lost. Video cards overheating and creating artifacts in the video image doesn't necessarily mean permanent damage. A computer booting up and then shutting down suddenly also doesn't necessarily mean permanent damage.

If your cooling's not working well you can get video artifacts and then an automatic system shutdown as part of a fail-safe mechanism built into all computers to prevent hardware from permanent damage.

Failed startups (your system boots and then shuts down automatically after) can also be the result of the thermal failsafe kicking in.

If your computer doesn't even do a cold start after pressing the power button (after having sat around in a shut-down state for like an hour so that components have a chance to cool), it's likely a power issue that has to do with the motherboard.

Open up the computer. Clean out all the lint and gunk from the fans and vents with compressed air and some toothpicks. Make sure that solid contact is made between the copper heatpipes and the chips they're mounted to. Turn on the computer and make sure the fans spin. Make sure that you feel warm air coming out of the exhausts (if there isn't, that means heat is not being dumped out of the exhaust ie. it's staying inside the system).

In my experience thermal compound doesn't wear out. And yes, there is thermal compound on all components that come in contact with the heatpipes. You'll never see a copper heatpipe covering the bare material on a GPU chip, for instance. There will always be thermal compound or thermal tape between the two surfaces.

 

[corkyg]

Heatpipes in a laptop? Never seen that!

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Heatpipes iu a laptop? Never seen that!

Yeah, like here in an Asus UX32VD

https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/efn43XqlR3CD6fnM.medium

From left to right you see it (the black squiggly metal piece) connected to a fan, then the CPU, then the GPU, and off screen is a second fan.

 

[corkyg]

Thanks, Fuzzy! That is good to know. OTOH, this thread is about the Dell 15R 1522, and I can't find them there.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/inspiron-15r-5520/manuals

 

[StalemateBlack]

The only PCB I've successfully reflowed was a 8800GT card from way back - and that only extended the life of the card by about 12 months.

I was mostly doing it for the sake of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised to see the card spark back up to life after it had been displaying artifacts more and more often.

 

[abbcccus]

I recently replaced the mSATA drive in my Inspiron 15R, though I have a 7520 instead of the 5520. The youtube tear down video was the same for both laptops, if I recall correctly. The video was actually of a 5520 disassembly and mine was pretty much the same. They both have heatsinks that are sort of in a "V" shape with the fan in the middle and the connection made at the edge of the laptop where the fan exhausts. One leg covers the CPU and the other the GPU. I decided to replace the thermal paste since I was already in there and there are two things worth noting here: (1) there was thermal paste slathered all over the place on both processors and (2) once cleaned off the contact surface was revealed to be scratched to hell. I didn't bother trying to lap or anything, but I did replace the thermal paste with a far more modest helping of AS Ceramique. Sorry, I don't have a before / after temperature comparison, but it does seem to be a little cooler and I'm more at ease! Good luck!