Hi

My inspiron i5 laptop has been overheating, Idle temps of 55C for both gpu and cpu and load temps 105C,  So I dismantled to give it a clean. I removed the heatsink and noticed the thermal pad on gpu was split/damaged.

It needs replacing, any idea of the correct thickness and procedure for replacing. Do I need to apply paste as well as the pad?

I have replaced the paste on the cpu with a silicon based paste that I had lying around, would this be ok, The stuff that was originally on it was a grey colour , I assume it is silver or zinc based, 

The laptop shuts down regularly due to this problem. It has A04 bios, I would like to update as I believe the new bios fixes some thermal issues with this model. However whilst the machine is unstable, I dare not risk it .

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Kind  regards

Mik