question

[fyshawk]

I have a Dell 1525 Laptop and the thermal pad for the gpu has dried up big time and fell off now i was wondering if i could just use Artic silver 5 on it would that do any harm to it sorry for posting in here but didnt know where to post

[Arinoth]

Thermal pad or thermal paste? I believe you are meaning to say the thermal paste (under the gpu heatsink i am assuming) has dried up and fallen off. If it is indeed thermal paste then yes you can use that, if its actually a thermal pad, its there to help hold things together as well and you'll need to replace it with a thermal pad unless i am mistaken

[Lpfan4ever]

First of all, punctuation is not a myth. It may surprise you but there is a period on your keyboard, along with a question mark and exclamation mark, among other things.

Secondly, no. A thermal pad takes up quite a bit of space vertically, which thermal paste does not. Unless there's a way to tighten it so the heatsink and GPU die are touching.

[_dangtx_]

ive used thick pastes before, but if theres too much of a gap itll run off sometimes.