Removing the shim is honestly not ideal either. You need the wider contact area on the heat pipe it provides. Removing it will partially impede its heat transfer. If you do not need it removed to make room for a soldered in modchip ribbon, leave it installed. It’s a small difference, but for the future it’s best to just cleaning+repasting both sides and replacing the shield.
My quick repasting guide:
1. remove console back panel (duh)
2. Remove heatshield, heatsink, and SoC heat spreader(“shim”), careful not to tear any film of foam used for ducting air/pressure areas
3. Clean all surfaces with 99% isopropyl alcohol or highest available (ventilation is a MUST with 99%. Gloves highly recommended.) there are many small crevices to watch for. Get as much of the old paste off you can
4. Apply thermal paste to the SoC and replace the heatspreader. Do not press down. Let mounting pressure do the spreading. I’ve used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Extreme with consistently phenomenal results, though it’s a little overkill it’s what I have lying around.
5. Apply the same thermal paste to the top of the heat spreader. Replace the heat sink. Once again, let mounting pressure spread the paste.
6. Use a viscous paste on the top of the heat pipe between it and the heat shield. I recommend K5 Pro as it’s known to bridge big gaps very well. Be generous with your application. I do not recommend a thermal pad. Again, let mounting pressure do the spreading, ESPECIALLY important with viscous pastes with K5 Pro as flattening it breaks its bridge.
7. (OPTIONAL) I’ve also installed a thick aluminum back shell replacement. I’ve noticed temp improvements both indoors and outdoors with it installed. I decided to bridge the heatshield to the back plate directly over the SoC(hot end of the heat pipe only!!) and saw another notable improvement. It’s especially noticeable during the cooler months. Living near the ocean as well in NYC, it’s pretty breezy outside which actually helps passively cool the console a lot.
The trade off is that PCB temps are 1-2°C warmer when docked/OCed indoors and battery temps are 2-3°C warmer under load docked (could be just that it was charging too, not too worried about it), but everything else sees an improvement well worth the trade off. Fans are lower speed a lot of the time on both stock curves and 4IFIR’s(preferred, I fucking love 4IFIR/S7+ on my v1 Switch. Thank you Cooler3D.)
Do you recommend thermal pads on top of the memory modules inside the shim? (between shim and memory module) and maybe outsite on top of the shim? I've seen people do that and I'm not sure if its effective or not.
