I'm in the process of cleaning my Asus G14 laptop and wanted to replace the thermal paste since it's been at least two years. However, I've found that the cooler is totally stuck to the CPU and GPU, and I'm hesitant to pull too hard. I'm wondering, if dry and flaky thermal paste means it needs to be replaced, does a cooler that's stuck indicate that the thermal paste is still in a good, gel-like state? This may seem silly, but I really don't know what to do.
1 Answer
It's actually a good sign that the paste is sticking well, but it usually means it's time for a change. To help detach the cooler, you could try warming it up a bit—maybe run some CPU-heavy tasks first to heat things up, then let the laptop cool down before trying to remove it. That should help loosen it up!
Yeah, heating it up is a solid approach. If you don't want to run the laptop, you could also use a heat gun or just a warm cloth over the cooler.