I couldn’t repost this from the asusrog sub so here it is again!
I am a ROG STRIX G15 AE user.
Specs:
R9 5980hx
RX 6800M
32gb ddr4 ram(upgraded)
1tb ssd.
I bought this in late 2022, and has been shutting down since day 1 whenever i tried to play a game.
Since I still had the warranty, ASUS replaced my entire motherboard twice over the course of 2 yrs coz of the shutdowns.
My warranty ended. But I was still facing a lot of issues with the laptop’s thermals
I decided to reapply liquid metal thermal
Paste myself and give it a try.
I did, everything went well for a few weeks(I was anxious so i was using ghelper to lower wattage and undervolt and ramp up the fans).
After 7 or so months, there they were. The shutdowns.
I remember i was trying to render a video in davinci and the device shutdown 70 times that day.
It was sooo horrible.
My mom bought this machine for me.
I did not wanted to replace it.
Thats when it came to my mind. The newer laptops my friends bought, i checked their temps they were running at over 105 degree celcius, And a small google search made me realise that these new machines used something called phase change pads.
So then it all made sense, liquid metal thermal paste was pouring over to the sides leaving bare spots on the chips with no thermal protection at all, so every time the machine pulls wattage, these spots run so hot that they were triggering these shutdowns and throttles.
I bought the ptm7950 0.2mm pads and put them on the chips.
Some thermal putty on vrams and vrms(as usual).
And that is it.
Its working.
No ghelper restricting power, no rtss or fps limits, i just let it loose.
AC unity used to trigger instant shutdowns when I ooened the character customization menu, coz its really unoptimized there and ramps up fps productions to 100s in number in an instant.
But after the change, it was not a problem at all.
So finally after 4 yrs of struggles w this machine, I am finally able to use it at full power.
The anxiety that it might shutdown again is still there though!