Finally saw a real 10 degree drop after adding a copper shim to my laptop hinge area

I've been fighting my old Dell XPS running hot for like a year now. Last week I cut a thin copper shim and wedged it under the heat pipe near the hinge where there's that gap. After running Cinebench for 30 minutes my peak temp went from 94C down to 84C. I was kind of shocked it made that big of a difference for like $3 in materials. Has anyone else tried adding shims in weird spots on their laptop instead of just repasting?

2 comments

2 Comments

lisa_jones2117d agoProlific Poster

That 10 degree drop is pretty solid for a copper shim jammed in the hinge gap. Did you check if the shim is making direct contact with something that actually gets hot, or is it just sitting in that empty space and somehow pulling heat away? On my old HP, I tried a similar trick near the VRM area and only got 3-4 degrees because the shim wasn't touching the main heat pipe at all. I'm curious if you bent the shim to fit tight against the pipe or just let it sit there loose.

julia28617d ago

Oh man, I actually watched a teardown video recently on some Dell laptop where the guy did this exact thing and he was saying that the shim has to be clamped or held tight against the heatpipe or whatever is transferring the heat, otherwise it's basically just a metal slug sitting in dead air and not doing much. I think the trick for a lot of people is they miss that the shim needs to bridge a gap to something that's actually warm to the touch, not just the empty space around the motherboard. That 10 degree drop on your end sounds like you accidentally made a good contact point, maybe the shim is resting right on the back of a hot chip or the actual heat spreader area. I remember reading somewhere that even a tiny bit of thermal paste between the shim and whatever it's touching makes a huge difference too.