Just wanted to share my recent experience with gaming on my laptop. While playing CS:GO was manageable, CS2 was a different story. My laptop kept hitting thermal limits, causing frustrating performance drops. So, I decided to do it myself and repaste it.
I wrote a simple script to monitor my temperatures and frequencies: thermalog script.
Some manufacturers don’t even remove the protective plastic before pasting and most just use the cheapest grease availlable.
My thinkpad got from notoriously loud to being mostly passive with some grease at the right places.