Blade 16 Re-Paste | Razer Insider

Blade 16 Re-Paste

  • 25 October 2023
  • 5 replies
  • 553 views

I want to add a comment here for those of you thinking about repasting. I bought a Blade 16 with the 4080 in it. Please, RZR, sell the 4090 with the QHD display (off topic :)). I always thought the PC ran hot, just compared to my previous experiences.

In Intel XTU, settings on boost/High GPU, the Blade was thermally throttling and instantly hit 100 c. I then went into overclock, disabled boost all together, kept the CPU at max 120w, and was still instantly thermally throttling. I then undervolted the CPU in XTU (-.110 Core offset, -0.090 Cache for P & E Cores). It was, of course, thermally throttling, still as I expected, but the frequency on the CPU was higher. (I have not kept tuning from here, just the first settings I ran with from what I believed was a good starting point, and it was stable for 14 hours with no HW Info Errors.

At this point, I was really confident I needed to re-paste the computer. I have not done it before (but I do build quite a few desktop PCs), and I was a bit worried about doing it. I live in Barbados now, so there is no local person I could trust to do it. So, I dug in. I heated up the stickers, pulled them off and pulled back the vapor chamber. The cables had me the most worried, I left the rear one on and pulled the front two off.

The paste job Razer did. looked good so I was a bit worried I wasted my time to this point. But I continued and used Noctua NT-H2. I’m not using liquid metal, but wish I had Gelid GC Extreme or PTM7950. I have never tested the later two, just heard they are good options. I have used NT-H2 for years on my desktop’s, mostly water cooled and it works great so I’m comfortable with this choice even if others may work slightly better.

Put the computer together, open XTU, Synapse, and HW INFO and rerun with the same settings as above however this time I turned boost back on in Synapse to the standard 160w. Hit start on the benchmark and watched in amazement. It hit power limits, and current limits, VRM heat limit, and very little THERMAL THROTTLING! When it thermally throttled, all 4 limits were going off. I suspect if I had new thermal pads for the VRM or after a few days of them settling back in the VRM heat limit won’t be an issue.

When the boost cycle was over, the power limit of 120W hit and the PC settled in at 85-90c and 4.1 - 4.15ghz at the 120W limit. I have no doubt I could raise that limit and continue tuning, which I may do in the future. For now, I am really happy with this result. The re-paste was a major success. I highly suggest if you are thermally throttling in XTU, with the OC enabled in synapse, after the boost phase, you need to re-paste your cpu/gpu.


5 Replies

Userlevel 1

I have the exact opposite experience on my second blade 16, which I received as a replacement for the first blade 16 that ran as high as 107 Celsius. 
 

I’m a certified computer engineer and took it upon myself to replace the factory paste with PTM 7950 for the CPU and GPU. Unfortunately it didn’t help one bit. The laptop elevated with a razor stand and fans on full and the settings that allows you to run the fans on full and I’ll still 105C with average temperatures in the low 90s. Under vaulting -125. Only seems to make it run hotter. 
 

the only way around this is to disable boost, which causes the CPU to run around 2 GHz. 
 

if I could, I would ask razor to allow us to run fans on max while setting the CPU in the middle performance range. 

Userlevel 1

I’ll add that trying to control the temps by setting the P core multiplier to 45. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.  

Userlevel 1

Limiting to 45 works well to. Control temps. 

I have the exact opposite experience on my second blade 16, which I received as a replacement for the first blade 16 that ran as high as 107 Celsius. 
 

I’m a certified computer engineer and took it upon myself to replace the factory paste with PTM 7950 for the CPU and GPU. Unfortunately it didn’t help one bit. The laptop elevated with a razor stand and fans on full and the settings that allows you to run the fans on full and I’ll still 105C with average temperatures in the low 90s. Under vaulting -125. Only seems to make it run hotter. 
 

the only way around this is to disable boost, which causes the CPU to run around 2 GHz. 
 

if I could, I would ask razor to allow us to run fans on max while setting the CPU in the middle performance range. 

Same here, repasted with PTM7950 and Noctua NT-H2 and both gave me the same results as the stock thermal paste.

Guys, can I ask what is your ambient temperature when you did the testing?

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