I’ve been doing some experimentation lately with my Switch, and have replaced the thermal paste on all layers (under the copper heat spreader, under the heat sink, and on top of the heat pipe). I used a combination of Thermal Grizzly PhaseSheet (for heat spreader and heat sink) and K5 Pro (for heat pipe) if anyone is curious. I am running a Switch with the original SOC (higher heat and power) that I bought in about late 2018.

I wasn’t expecting much if anything, but in games they seem to have had a bit of a performance improvement, especially in docked mode. The two games I especially noticed were Fire Emblem Three Houses and Pokemon Violet. In Three Houses, the loading sections in explore mode (so fully in game, with everything still showing on screen) took far less time than I remember (1-3 seconds compared to 5-10) along with a higher frame rate during the loading, and in Violet the frame rate seems a decent bit more stable. Unfortunately, since my Switch is not modded, I do not have any hard performance numbers to back up these perceived improvements. I have heard that the Switch will prioritise CPU clocks over GPU when loading due to thermal restrictions, but I cannot find anything about it being able to boost both if it has the thermal headroom. The outside of the Switch is definitely exhausting more heat, which could suggest more heat is being taken away from the SOC and consequently cooling it down.

Does anyone have any experience with doing this, and have you gotten a similar result? I am curious to find out if this is just placebo, or if this is genuinely a way to increase performance even just by a little bit.

  • Narann@jlai.luEnglish
    51·
    4 days ago

    Interesting. The important part to me is this:

    The outside of the Switch is definitely exhausting more heat, which could suggest more heat is being taken away from the SOC and consequently cooling it down.

    Dumb hypothesizes from a non-expert:

    • You have cleaned dust during your modifications, making a better air Flow (more heat out, better internal thermal, better CPU performance).
    • You have broken a thermal sensor and your switch is actually heating a lot while the sensor think it does not.
    • Both ?
    • heythatsprettygood@feddit.ukOPEnglish
      4·
      4 days ago

      You raise some fair points. I’ll answer to the best of my knowledge:

      • Dust: There was nearly zero dust in the system, as it has been kept in a clean room and has been used outside only rarely. Therefore, the only dust was a bit on the speakers.
      • Temperature sensors: There were no temperature sensors on any of the parts I removed, so I assume the Switch is like a PC GPU where the sensors are integrated into the chips rather than being external. The fan still spins at a decent pace to keep up with the heat, so those sensors still appear to be working.