Laptops heatsink thermal paste or thermal pad?

Because I didn't know where to ask and open a thread I put this here: Original laptops heatsink thermal paste or thermal pad?

As professional repair workman exclusively on laptops I encountered for many times now a lot of problems regarding this. As all of you that repair and fix laptops you find many times that you are not the only one or the first one that disassemble a particular laptop. So many times the laptop previously it was opened by inexperienced one and cleaned up for dust but they never replace the thermal pads, only the thermal paste! So, sometimes you amazingly find that the thermal pad was replaced only with paste or, if you are lucky, the pad remains and then was applied the paste on top of this pad (which is worse, by the way). But my question is regarding this pads. If it was removed how do I know if the original heat-sink was with pad or just paste. I google-it for the images of used heat-sinks and sometimes you will find a real one but not always. So how do we know if previously there was only paste or just a thermal pad?

You can always ask for it on the forum. All people know everything.

Because I didn't know where to ask and open a thread I put this here: Original laptops heatsink thermal paste or thermal pad?

You should ask on WORKSHOP REPAIRS subforum. However, I'll answer for your major question:

johnbad napisał(a):If it was removed how do I know if the original heat-sink was with pad or just paste. I google-it for the images of used heat-sinks and sometimes you will find a real one but not always. So how do we know if previously there was only paste or just a thermal pad?

Just apply a very small dot of heatsink paste onto the center of chipset core, fit the heatsink normally and then, remove it. If you find that the paste has spread evenly all over a chipset core surface, has been squizzed out and you will see that the whole core has been imprinted onto the heatsink (in case of AMD or nVidia chipsets, you can see a negative writings), you need to apply a heatsink paste. But if you find that not a whole core surface is covered by the very thin paste coating, you need to fit a thermal pad.

Vogelek23 napisał(a):Just apply a very small dot of heatsink paste onto the center of chipset core

Thank you for the idea, I thought about it before, this method if it's not time consuming is "paste consuming" sort of speak... even if it's a small amount, then, if you realize that there was a thermal pad you have to clean up again paste residues...