I finally saw the whole before-and-after thing with thermal paste today

Swapped out a 3 year old dried-up mess for some fresh Arctic MX-6 on a gaming rig and the temps dropped 15C under load. Did I just get lucky or is that normal for most paste jobs that old?

3 comments

3 Comments

felixm2919h ago

Was it a big difference from stock paste or were you using something decent before? I had basically the same thing happen on my old Ryzen 5 build. Three years of whatever came pre-applied from the cooler, then I swapped to some Noctua NT-H2 and saw a 13-14 degree drop right away. I think it's totally normal after a few years. That stuff just dries out and cracks, especially if you're running the PC a lot or it gets warm in the room. You did the right thing, 15C is a solid win for something so cheap and easy.

miasanchez16h ago

Picked up a 12C drop on my old i7-7700K when I finally swapped the stock paste after like four years. It wasn't even running hot before, just wanted to see if it mattered. That stuff was crusty and flaky, looked like dried up play-doh. You don't realize how much it degrades until you actually replace it and see the numbers change. Honestly, for the price of a tube of paste, it's one of the best cheap upgrades you can do every few years.

emma_garcia18h ago

Hang on, is a 15C drop really that huge of a deal though? I mean, yeah, it's a nice improvement, but your old paste was basically dust at that point. @felixm29 makes a good point about it being normal, but I've seen people act like thermal paste is some kind of magic fix when really it's just fixing a problem you shouldn't have had in the first place. If your temps were already fine, you probably wouldn't have even noticed the swap. I redid a laptop once and got a 7C drop, which felt like nothing compared to the hassle of taking that thing apart.