5
I had spilled a drink onto my laptop keyboard. During disassembly, I found this strange item inside. Looks like a piece of sticky rubber.
What is it? What is the purpose of it?
Bartlomiej Lewandowski
Posted 2014-04-22T14:00:15.270
Reputation: 147
10
Its most likely an insulator to protect from an electrical short from the keyboard (or whatever was above/below it).
Keltari
Posted 2014-04-22T14:00:15.270
Reputation: 57 019
4
It looks a bit too thick for an insulator, so I would say it's a thermal pad.
It's designed to make thermal contact (transfer heat) between what's below it (most likely CPU voltage regulators) and what's above it, which is a metallic part (either a dedicated heatsink or just a big part of the laptop casing) that will dissipate heat.
1This is actually the correct answer. Game consoles have smaller squares of this all over the place. They are always connecting something that generates a lot of heat to some kind of heat spreader. I would not doubt that they could serve both purposes however. – steve – 2014-04-23T06:18:19.350
5Absorbing spilled drinks isn't enough of a function for you? Some people are never happy. – HopelessN00b – 2014-04-22T17:34:12.847
1It looks like a thermal pad. What's under it? – ntoskrnl – 2014-04-22T18:49:01.327
Might serve to avoid short-circuits by touching whatever is above, help keep the board in place, ... – vonbrand – 2014-04-22T21:28:35.677