Dell Studio 1558 Cooling Solution

Dear @Dell,

I have happily used my Studio 1558 Ci3 3GBram ATI 5470 1GB 128GB-SATA 512 GB-HDD (on optical bay with caddy) for more than 5 yrs (bought in July 2010). Recently however the graphic started throwing tantrums and gave the classic VGA failure screen (Green gibberish on BIOS and then no video). So I promptly got a 3.5W thermal pad (blue color) and replaced the burnt pad (Red pad that had a burn hole) on the VGA chip. Also I replaced the paste with some noctua. After 5 restarts same old story. Windows starts throwing blue screen when watching movies.

Also laptop touch-pad gets very hot due to south bridge.

Now I also tried upgrading the RAM to 4X2 for a total of 8 GB. BIOS shows all the RAM but windows fails to boot and goes into a loop on the boot screen (Win 7 Premium x64). At this point the south bridge heats like crazy. the first attempt at RAM upgrade started the touch-pad heating.

So finally I want to replace my thermal pad and south-bridge pad (whatever is under the heat-sink) with copper shims as I find my thermal paste to be excellent (fan temps are low throughout and fan spins only once at windows startup and then goes silent and yes it does come on again when I am on youtube).

Guys please help me and suggest the correct thickness of shims that I can buy off the shelf and that will fit nicely without any tinkering.

Thanks again for hearing me out,

Sincerely,

Antarix