DO NOT use Frostsheet (graphene thermal pad)

[Suicide]

Quick story short, I changed the thermal paste for one of those thin graphene thermal pads.
I almost killed my Steam Deck because of it.

So please, DO NOT use graphene thermal pads as they're TOO THIN and you'll find all sorts of plobems between surprising cold fan air (🤔) to potentially overheating and killing your CPU.

Not a fun way to "protect" your Steam Deck. Temperatures should range from 80 to 85 degrees celsius, while having the GPU at 1600 MHz and 99% usage.

Just good old thermal paste guys...

[invision2212]

its been known for a long time not to use those thermal pads on CPU or GPU cores

[class101 [OLED deck]]

Do use

ARCTIC MX-4

Reputable brand and last several years

[Cyberbeing]

If you want a long serviceable pads use those industrial PCM pads from Honeywell. You can find some online outlets selling them to end consumer.

[Waldherz]

Originally posted by class101 deck:

Do use

ARCTIC MX-4

Reputable brand and last several years

We are at MX-6 now btw.
Thermal Grizzly is also good, even better depending on the use case and exact paste.

[deaddoof]

Temperatures should range from 80 to 85 degrees celsius, while having the GPU at 1600 MHz and 99% usage

https://youtu.be/NeQH__XVa64?t=475

The Battery ICD is the hottest component. You need to make sure the fan is running to cool the chip.

[fender178]

Also the thermal paste that Valve uses is a high quality paste. Someone Tested the Thermal Grizzly paste which a lot of users deem one of the best pastes on the market on the Steam Deck and the results were nothing to write home about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBx-13a4OMo

[BearddOddity]

I'm super late to this conversation but isn't there a risk of the thermal paste leaking and damaging the surrounding hardware due to the mobility? I would like to mention I'm rather inexperienced in thermal paste knowledge. If this comment seems ignorant of such knowledge I applogize but please let me know if there is a risk or not

[invision2212]

Originally posted by BeardedOddity:

I'm super late to this conversation but isn't there a risk of the thermal paste leaking and damaging the surrounding hardware due to the mobility? I would like to mention I'm rather inexperienced in thermal paste knowledge. If this comment seems ignorant of such knowledge I applogize but please let me know if there is a risk or not

nope its fine, considering almost every single CPU is mounted sideways on a motherboard with no issue of thermal paste leakage. plus thermal paste is quite thick and doesn't thin out when heated.

[Cyberbeing]

Originally posted by BeardedOddity:

I'm super late to this conversation but isn't there a risk of the thermal paste leaking and damaging the surrounding hardware due to the mobility? I would like to mention I'm rather inexperienced in thermal paste knowledge. If this comment seems ignorant of such knowledge I applogize but please let me know if there is a risk or not

There's little to no harm having thermal paste leakage since most are not electrically conductive.

[BearddOddity]

Thank you for answering it helped greatly

[metal_hamster]

What happened to your deck that you needed to reapply thermal paste? Sounds like a lot of tinkering for nothing, unless something happened to it.

[BearddOddity]

Nothing has happened yet. all the modifications I've made I will eventually need to reply paste so for now I'm just looking as much knowledge as possible before I need to do something about it. doesn't hurt to look into possibilities

[Dromark]

What about the honeywell ptm7950 pcm pad?

[Suicide]

Originally posted by BeardedOddity:

Nothing has happened yet. all the modifications I've made I will eventually need to reply paste so for now I'm just looking as much knowledge as possible before I need to do something about it. doesn't hurt to look into possibilities

The thing is, there aren't any possibilities because Valve treats the Steam Deck as it is, a CONSOLE and NOT A PC. So you can't modify ANYTHING. Not the SSD, not the thermal paste, not even the BIOS.

I had to learn this in a bad way, so I post it here to warn some users.

[BearddOddity]

Even majority of consoles need to be kept clean every 3 to 6 months and reapplication of thermal paste on console every 1 to 2 years. To prevent dust and hair buildup if you have animals. Not cleaning can cause house fires and console burnouts and hardware failure.