O!Play Air (HDP-R3)

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Here folks we have what the factory probably calls an engineering change and what I call a problem.

Both the O!Play and the O!Play Air use a passive cooling solution.
The O!Play (HDP-R1) used a gummy pad as the thermal connection between the chip and the heatsink.
This O!Play Air (HDP-R3) uses a gummy film as the thermal connection between the chip and the heatsink.

The problem I noted in my Pry It Open thread last October is that gummy pads have a tendency to cook and lose their effectiveness with time.

With the newest engineering change to using a gummy film, there is a problem with the fact that the film does not make full contact with the chip and the heatsink.
This cuts the thermal path down to four, tiny, spots on my machine.

The Realtek RTD-1073 is known to be a hot running chip;
With this factory change, we can be assured that it will now fail sooner rather than later.

The following pages will show how I dealt with this problem on my machine (both of them actually).