Precision 7550 thermopaste

Any good quality non-conductive (i.e., not liquid metal) paste will do the job.

Hi @zvezda3254  what thermal paste have you chosen in the end and how are your cpu temps?

I got a used 7550 and the laptop was barely used, but the previous owner said it was overheating when in high load. Someone had changed the paste and put a tiny scratch on the cpu and heat sink. Temps in idle were at around 65 cpu 58 gpu , original thermal pads still in place and looking good. I didn't even bother to try higher load and see how the laptop behaves. Owner said he didn't notice a change in behavior after thermal paste change. So i believe, the paste that was used was low quality.

I put arctic mx4, and temps dropped to 55 cpu 52 gpu. still with original thermal pads, but in high load, unsatisfying results imo. 

I swtiched to thermal grizzly kryonaut, now temps are in idle 45 cpu and 41 gpu. Are these temps normal?

Because in higher load, the laptop still gets a bit hot. All this while running on Cool through dell optimizer, in both cases. I have to be honest, i am afraid to use it for more than 30 minutes in high load on ultra performance, the surface where the speakers are gets rather hot and cpu temps are always between 96-100 and gpu temps at about 80-85... but other than that, the laptop behaved pretty stable.

How much of a temp drop should i expect if i changed the thermal pads? And also, are those very, very small scratches on the cpu and heat sink a big problem?