GEEKOM makes the same mistake with poor quality thermal paste
I found KitGuru’s review interesting because they discovered that the GEEKOM M16’s factory thermal paste was poor enough that simply replacing it improved CPU performance by almost 30%. What’s more, the same issue also affected the company’s smaller laptop launched a few months earlier.
The laptop uses a Core Ultra 9 185H configured with a 45W power limit. At stock settings, the M16 scored around 690 points in the Cinebench multi-core test. This was only 5.8% higher than the 652 points previously measured on the GEEKOM X14 Pro, despite the M16 allowing around 30% more CPU power.
© KitGuru 
© KitGuru The reviewer suspected that cooling was limiting performance despite apparently controlled temperatures. GEEKOM equipped the M16 with twice as many heat pipes and fans compared with the earlier X14 Pro, but the factory thermal paste remained a problem.
© KitGuru After replacing the stock paste with another thermal compound, the Cinebench score increased to as much as 895 points. That represents a 29.7% improvement over the stock configuration . The CPU also became warmer because it was able to use more of its available power.
Geekom needs to fix their thermal paste applications
This is not the first GEEKOM laptop where the reviewer found a large improvement from repasting. The previous X14 Pro reportedly gained around 13% in Cinebench after replacing its factory thermal paste. On the M16, however, the difference was more than twice as large.
The problem is that regular users are unlikely to tear apart a new laptop just to replace the thermal paste, especially if doing so could affect the warranty. Reviewers can experiment with this because warranty coverage is not really a concern, but what are buyers supposed to do knowing that a simple repaste can improve CPU performance by almost 30%?
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