Thermal Transfer Pads are used to bridge the gap between Heatsinks and Chips where heat paste will not bridge the gap, they are those blue sticky pads. A usual place to find these is in a laptop on the GPU between it and the heatsink. There are several sizes 0.5mm,1.0mm, 1.5mm, 2.0mm and 3.0mm. There might be other sizes but these are the main ones. For my research so far it looks like 1.5mm is the one most used.
These should all be non-conductive. I have ordered a Grey one and had White arrived and the guy said they were the same. Also a small note that they have different values of heat transfer, for the most part this should not be a problem for general laptop repairs.
Thermal Transfer Pads are also known as:
- Thermal Paste Pad
- Thermal Pad
- ThermalPad
- Thermal-Pad
- Thermal Heatsink Pad
- Thermal Heatsink Transfer Pad
- Conductive Heatsink Tape
- Thermal Conductive Pad
- Thermal Conductive Silicone Pad
- Heat Transfer Pad
- Phase Change Pad
- Silicon Pad
- Silicon Thermal Pad
- Thermal Heatsink Transfer Pad
- Thermal-Pads are high quality Thermoplastic Components
- Thermal Sink (not always used)
I have bought from:
- 10x10x1mm Silicon Thermal Pad Heatsink - kissbuyonline (eBay) - cheap chinese
- 100mm x 20mm x 1.5mm double sided self adhesive - thegamebooth (eBay) - could be better quality
- 100mm x 20mm x 2mm double sided self adhesive - thegamebooth (eBay) - could be better quality
- 100mm x 100mm x 2mm Thick Thermal Pad ecamonline2012 (eBay)- cheap chinese
- [EC-360 GREEN] 2MM ThermalPad 100x100mm, Adhesive 2.5W/mK RAM Heat Transfer | eBay - not bought this but seems high quality product. different heights available
Notes
- thegamebooth seem to sell better quality transfer pads
- pads all have different rates of dispersing the heat. be carefult to check this.