Chris here with the EZBook x4. So I've just finished my full review of this
particular model and before I can do any sorts of mods it's always the case with
my reviews I have to review them as stock so that goes for Android devices
and must be the stock rom no custom roms and when it comes to things like tablets
and these laptops no modifications to the one so ever so my review with the
stock 9 watt TDP that it has set the power limit it gets up to 93 degrees
Celsius which is a little too hot so I'm going to remove the heatsink here take a
look at the thermal pad that's underneath
perhaps re paste it so I've got some similar paste right here and then add a
thermal pad onto the top to see if I can lower those temperatures now if the
temperatures do turn out to be low enough then I will also try running it
with an unlocked or increased power limit always place to be safe so I've
unplugged it here now this will probably reset the BIOS settings so just be aware
of that here but why I'm unplugging it so we don't have any power going through
this there should be no power going through it but imagine it accidentally
turns on we could short something out also try to earth yourself and use an
anti-static mat okay so I've got the heatsink off as you can see and it just
had this thermal pad on the top of it and I believe what's happening in my
case here that there seems to be a bit of an arc to this copper heatsink and so
it's not actually sitting 100% flush applying pressure or enough pressure to
actually have a good contact with the top of the CPU die there so that is
probably why I got up to 93 degrees so if you placed a thermal pad on top that
will give some more pressure between the rear of the case the alloy which is
right here so you have that pressing down a top on top of it then and I don't
think it would then run into any problem so that's prolly all you need to do
interesting to note here as well the RAM so we've got four gigabytes right here
and space for another four so even though windows reports that send
dual-channel it may looks like and well now doesn't it that it's only running in
single channel probably the way that this is set up you can see here that the
stocks will pad it's very thin it's only half a millimeter the thickness of there
so that also could be a bit of a problem why it didn't have so much pressure so
in the past with the bay try cheery trails and the Apollo Lakes what
I used to do was just put a copper shim on top here now there's a little bit
risky now you use a thermal paste that's non conductive so this one here from
Noctua isn't so if use one of those liquid metal ones you will definitely
run into problems you need to protect all those little surrounding resistors
now the issue with this is that there's a very small gap between the resistors
and then the copper shim so in theory it could move it could touch it could shut
something out now I've run this and done this now for years without any issues so
I don't think it's going to be a problem but I think here that it's not actually
needed so I'm just gonna put a little bit of thermal paste on the top here and
then simply place the stock copper heatsink back on there because it's a
large copper heatsink and this should really do the job especially when I add
a thermal pad onto the top of it now to make sure it's gonna apply pressure
without the issue that I had when I first took my soph I could see that it
wasn't and actually had a little bit of a bend to it upward so it wasn't
applying enough pressure so what I've done I've just bent it inwards ever so
slightly you don't wanna do it too much then it won't actually sit flat on top
of the CPU so I've done that just a little bit and that should help I think
alright so I'm gonna try and put the tiniest little bit here no I'm not
left-handed it's the camera tripod that's in the way so just a very small
little bit now you use your own method for this replying thermal paste this is
just what I like to do I like to use a plastic bag then to get a very thin even
coat I know maybe it's not the best method but for me it just works so do
whatever works for you okay so done it doesn't actually spread
out as good as I hoped it would it's a little bit thicker the NT h1 paste here
that I have used then the typical ones I normally go with and now the placement
of the thermal pad so I'm gonna go with a two millimeter thick one here which
could actually be too thick might have to be one millimeter but even so I'm
gonna put it about here where the the chipset was where that dyers
and then I'll apply now pressure straight over that transfer heat onto
the back of the case so I get the case on I think it's still gonna fit just
fine but before you do that don't forget of course to plug that battery back in
alright so it closed down perfectly fine with just a little bit of pressure on
here I hope that 2 millimeters is actually thick enough if not I might
have to go a little bit thicker but this should be fine screw it in place here
it's not bulging nothing strange let's boot it up now and check the
temperatures alright so the results are pretty much fantastic okay you're
looking at 74 76 degrees at the moment and that's a huge improvement over my 93
degrees playing games but look at the frame rate here that is because I have
removed the power limit so the power limit now is completely unlocked it can
consume all the power at once and performance is up now because this is
project cars which I tested in my review ran at 5 frames per second and it's
getting up to 20 frames per second now so that is a performance increase of
about what is that 250 300 % that is really something so
that is good to see we can finally open up the performance of the Gemini lake in
4,100 here alright so it looks like the power limit being completely unlocked is
just a little bit too demanding here can you can see that now got up to 86
degrees so yes it's getting hot the case is getting hot but I just wanted to test
what kind of temperatures that would reach without any power limits now I
haven't shown you but without the power limits being touched so the Stockwood
comes out of the box which is 9 watts you only get temperatures now with my
thermal mod up to about 71 degrees maximum so it's lowered at about 20
degrees which is really good now to scroll down here and show you now that
because we've unlocked the power limits that it can consume now right up here to
almost 15 watts so that's quite a lot for this chipset and remember that the
stock will only be about 9 watts maximum that it will let the CPU consume so
boost the GPU performance massively but it will lower battery life it will
increase heat and the case does get really quite hot now I have to show you
counter strike again so this is the same settings as my review with 720p and on
the low settings so the frame rate has pretty much just doubled here because of
my review it was around 20 frames per second it's now up to about 54 you can
see maximum so it's made a huge difference and
to see here that not like project cars the frame rates are not the frame rate
the temperature is sticking to about 80 degrees maximum it doesn't seem to go
over that which is really good here so it seems it's going to maintain it with
my thermal pad mod and no power limits set half-life the Lost Coast is running
so much faster as well the frame rate has doubled over the stock nine watts
power limit that you get out of the box and the OpenCL score now gets a healthy
boost of almost two thousand points thanks to the unlocked power limits so
now checking just how hot it's getting after 20 minutes of gaming the case of
it at the top here 42 degrees so that is very warm to the touch
getting quite hot remember that thermal pad is transferring all that heat over
now to the case so there we go surprising what a little bit of thermal
paste and a thermal pad can do to really improve temperatures so if I didn't
change the power limit max temperatures are about 70 degrees that has dropped
down a huge 23 degrees over the stock setup that they had on this I've had the
thermal pad but as I noticed it wasn't very good contact and pressure being
applied from the copper heatsink onto the chipset itself so that was why my
unit got really hot this might not be happening to yours so if you do want to
really get that massive amount of performance there's a link in the
description of this video they will head over to my website to the forum of where
you can remove the power limits with software because when you change it in a
bias it doesn't actually seem to take but with software it will and there you
can just completely unlock the GPU basically is what is happening so it'll
clock up as high as it once uses much power and you double your framerate in
gaming which is really amazing but it will get hot thank you so much for
watching this review and best of luck with your own thermal mods there with
the EZBook x4