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Hot take: I used to think thermal paste was just a scam for upselling
Had a customer bring in a gaming rig last week that was overheating and shutting down. The paste on the CPU was bone dry and cracked, looked like it was from 2012. I cleaned it off and put on a fresh, thin layer of Arctic MX-6. Boot temps dropped from 95C to 65C under load, just like that. It's crazy how one cheap tube of paste can make or break a whole system. What's the oldest, crustiest paste job you've had to fix?
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the_faith6h agoMost Upvoted
That "bone dry and cracked" line got me... I used to think it was just marketing too until I saw the same thing on my old laptop.
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wright.uma2h ago
Wait, didn't some tech site do a big test on this? Honestly, I read something a while back about how thermal paste really does dry out over a few years. It stops moving heat from the chip to the cooler. Tbh that's probably why old laptops and consoles start overheating and sounding like jets. They showed pictures of the paste looking like dried up clay. Makes total sense now why replacing it helps so much.
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