Shower thought: thermal paste is just the plumbing of PC building

I was swapping a CPU cooler on a client's rig in my garage last Tuesday and forgot to clean the old paste off properly. Temp spiked to 92C under load in under a minute. Had to pull the whole thing apart, hit it with 99% isopropyl, and reapply a fresh pea-sized dot of Arctic MX-4 to drop it back to 68C. Anyone else ever skip a step and watch their temps go straight to hell?

2 comments

2 Comments

stellablack3d ago

Swapped to MX-6 and never looked back, temps stayed solid after that.

mila3953d ago

Same here lol. Swapped to MX-6 like a year ago and my temps have been rock solid too. I was using the stock thermal paste before and it was fine but after a few months my CPU would creep up during gaming. That stuff just holds up way better over time. Plus it spreads really easily so you don't mess up the application. Honestly I feel like people overthink thermal paste but once you try MX-6 you just get it. Nice to see someone else agrees.