T14 Gen 1 Intel heatsink upgrade
T14 Gen 1 Intel heatsink upgrade
I have a BASE model T14 gen 1 (1366x768 screen, lowest end i5, base ssd etc) and I was wanting to eek out a bit more performance out of this machine. It's quite thermally constrained with longer loads despite being the base model, and it's fan seems to barely move any air at all.
I know along with other T series you can install the heatsink from the higher end models with dGPUs and get much better cooling. Has anyone here done the same and can report back on performance differences?
Part No 5H40W36701 is the heatsink I have. Part No 5H40W36700 appears to be the model for the dGPU macines. Lenovo lists it as $61.16 for this part, but ebay has them for a little over $30. So the next question is it enough of a difference to justify it?
Just swapping the thermal paste has taken me from 179 to 200 in Cinnebench, but it's also revealed that I'm actually more PL1 limited since it drops down to just 15 in tests. With the old paste that was fine because I'd be running at 97c, but with the new paste I'm in the mid 80s with plenty of headroom. I downloaded throttlestop and set it to 51 and we'll see what my score is like going balls out. It's sustaining over 20 watts vs before I'd be at 17ish.
Yeah I replace the thermal paste on all new laptops. Does wonders