Looking at this budget tablet PC, I couldn´t resist and bought it with the 12GB of RAM and 512 SATA SSD. And it wouldn´t be me if I didn´t start to experiment with this little guy after a few days playing with it. Looking at the temps under load etc. I wondered. There is a hot spot near the charging port (and especially when playing games), and the CPU can get a little hot… like 100°C Which is not good for the internals, nor the LiPo battery. So I did decide to look under the hood a little. Having some cooling pads in reserve, and some thermal paste in the fridge.
There is a glob of thermal paste on the CPU. So I replaced it.
There is an isolation pad (not thermal pad) over the CPU, which has it´s logic, as you don´t
want to hold something that hot in your hands.
So, by evenly placing some thermal pads (1.5mm thick) on the heatsink, it now makes contact with the backplate.
The result?
The hotspot is gone and the heat is evenly diffused over the backplate. The CPU does not go over 65°C under load playing games at 21°C ambient temperature with the original or USB C charger attached. You can now even hold it in your hands and it is still comfortable to hold. And when all the heat is not dumped in the tablet, it may live longer and prosper
How to disassemble:
There are two small screws under the hinge. Unscrew and use a plastic prying tool (Thank God the display is plastic and not from glass.) between the display and the plastic sides (only the backplate is metal. That´s all folks. Have a nice Sunday.
Hello,
Nice input. Nice results also, I would say.
I didn’t want to disassemble it so I went on a different route. I added a magnetic Peltier cooler in the Backplate just on top of hotspot and I turn on when tablet is under load.
There are always more ways, to solve a problem In this case, it isn’t a real problem. It works fine as is. It isn’t intended for gaming in the first place. But with a little tweaking, it is possible to play old games like Half life or Descend Freespace 2 without throttling and grilling the insides. And a tablet this cheap… I just had to try Small, portable, with minimal power consumption. No need to take out my gaming/workstation laptop from the backpack. And much lighter and practical, than a convertible laptop. For the price it’s great.
Makes sense.
I’m now testing using the Chuwi tablet to access my gaming PC with Parsec to check if it’s fluid to play games streamed from the PC and to see if just the streaming does not heat up so much.
Works like a charm for a passively cooled tablet PC. DOOM 3 Ultra details at 1600x1200. Averaging around 49 FPS. No frame drops. Not bad. Really not bad. I would have thought the old CPU would perform much worse. And there is enough headroom for the GPU with the 12GB of RAM. Sometimes it jumps over 7GB system RAM usage and 1.4GB of GPU dedicated RAM when more is going on in game. So the 8GB would have struggled.
Nothing special. Arctic TP-3 120x20x1.5mm. I just cut some squares and dispersed them around the heatsink, to spread the heat more evenly to the backplate.
Tysm. I have that pad as well, just different size. Did you put some on the ssd too? I probably will, or after I upgrade it in a year or two (500gb is not that much)
Bought a pack with 4 of those. No, I didn’t put a pad on the SSD. The SATA SSD is 36C at max. The backplate gets warmer, so it would probably get warmer too. So that would be contraproductive.
Just did the SSD upgrade (1 TB) and applied a bunch of thermal pads to the heatsink.
I had been trying to use this tablet as a second monitor for my work laptop (using OBS and a USB HDMI capture dongle) but it was maxing out the CPU Temp consistently at around 100° C. After applying the thermal pads with exactly the same usage it’s down to about 70° C consistently over time.
I didn’t swap out the thermal paste on the CPU since, when prying up the copper heatsink, it was glued to something below and I didn’t want to risk bending it.
Thanks for the pointers!
One note: when opening the tablet, you need to push in towards the center of the tablet then swivel 90° to pry the side of the case outward.
There are four screws holding the heatsink. It is not glued. There is so much paste that it creates a suction effect. But I don’t think that it is really necessary to change the paste.
Thanks Marek - I must have missed a screw then since I only found 3 on the heatsink. Probably under the tape on the right side of the heatsink. In any case heat dispersion is working well now so I’m definitely not going to risk opening the tablet again.
Which is not good for the internals, nor the LiPo battery. So I did decide to look under the hood a little. Having some cooling pads in reserve, and some thermal paste in the fridge.
In this case, it isn’t a real problem. It works fine as is. It isn’t intended for gaming in the first place. But with a little tweaking, it is possible to play old games like Half life or Descend Freespace 2 without throttling and grilling the insides. And a tablet this cheap… I just had to try 
Small, portable, with minimal power consumption. No need to take out my gaming/workstation laptop from the backpack. And much lighter and practical, than a convertible laptop. For the price it’s great.
