Replacing the thermal paste on CPUs (and GPUs)?

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jacob
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Replacing the thermal paste on CPUs (and GPUs)?

Post by jacob »

I run a pretty old computer park (average age 12 years).

Now that ERE HQ room temperature stays around 85F (29C), especially my Intel Nuc has taken to putting the CPU fan into overdrive from time to time. I have never messed around with replacing the thermal paste before. According to the internet, it should be replaced somewhere between every 12 months and "after many, many years" :? :roll:

I presume that learning how to do so is easy enough (youtube university). W/o doing any research at all, I was just going to get a tube of the most commonly sold product which is Arctic MX-4. Is there anything that can go wrong? Is it really necessary after all?

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Jean
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Re: Replacing the thermal paste on CPUs (and GPUs)?

Post by Jean »

The difference is noticable.
I never did it on my GPU, but it's long overdue (if i look at how hoter it gets than it used to), it's a bit less trivial than on cpu, because you have to open it.
On the CPU, you just remove the fan, you clean, and put new paste. Since you don't need to remove the cpu from the socket, not much bad thing can happen.
Last edited by Jean on Thu Jul 03, 2025 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Slevin
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Re: Replacing the thermal paste on CPUs (and GPUs)?

Post by Slevin »

I usually only do it if the PC is overheating to the point of blue screening or noticeable slowdown from high CPU spikes where it makes no sense. First I’ll download an application that lets me read the CPU temp, see how high it’s getting, and assess from there. Like changing grout between tiles or a roof shingle or something, change it when it’s broken or looking like it needs replaced.

Doing it, yeah just get the common decent thermal paste, follow the YT guide. Make sure you make a good connection to the heat sink with the thermal paste. Then boot back up, push the same load that was causing the heat issue before. Compare to see if the temp is better. Worst case you didn’t make a good connection, and the temp spikes worse than before (unlikely). If that happens, just clean it off and try again. Biggest potential issue is bending a CPU pin if you need to pull out the CPU. You shouldn’t need to do this, so no really bad failure cases.

Overall, it’s a cheap fix to try and running the CPU at high temps too often can shorten the lifespan, but you are probably already far past expected lifespan.

fingeek
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Re: Replacing the thermal paste on CPUs (and GPUs)?

Post by fingeek »

I've had a number of PCs that have been fine for 15+yrs. I would start by watching the CPU temperature over a little while to see if there's anything to fix.

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