I'm very curious about repasting mine as well and what kind of difference in performance it could make.
Tancrad
joined 10 months ago
The intent of these ports are what's called sacrificial.
Its so you can use it to the point of damage or accident. And are able to replace the damaged bit.
Phone cases/tempered glass cover. Lens covers for NVGs. Paper cover on a hard cover book. Sacrificial to avoid damage of the good.
It's an incredible design feature they can tote as a modularity function. But the more important feature is that it's replaceable/upgradeable.
R7 on win 11. I upgraded from 12th i5.
I upgraded screen, battery, speakers.
My primary concern was the speakers, abysmal. The 80db are very loud, I wasn't expecting how loud they are. Maxed out they sound terrible, but they cover a way more reasonable volume range than before. Even if they have overall slightly less sound quality, I'm not listening to music on it, I'll use headphones for that. But YouTube videos or the odd game, 80db highly recommended.
Next concern was the heat. The i5 did not do well for me. R7 is substantially better. For performance, let alone heat and noise. And even now, after another users report, I may repaste.
Sort of wish there was a higher refresh screen but that's not picky, 60 is good enough and the brightness is great with the matte.
I personally dislike the front left and right sides in the wing shape. I much prefer the MacBook style body shape. But that's personal.