how often do you re-apply your thermal paste?

[J-Will]

Interesting that the oil (and usually it is an oil) drying out is considered a bad thing. I was under the impression it was just a carrier so the tiny particles of the metallic "dust" could migrate to fill the tiny voids. Volumes where written about this years ago.

Now there are a few speciality compounds that I am not up on, but if you read the description of how AS5 works (I picked it because it is likely the most widely used) it requires no "changing" and drying out which they refer to as "phase change" is by design.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/as5.htm

The oil/carrier is not part of the thermal solution long term. It is designed to dry out. At least for AS products.

It is because of this that AS5 needs to "cure" a bit for optimal performance.

MX2 another very popular compound says this.



http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=39_&mID=127


Can anyone find a compound that does recommend "refreshing" on a reqular basis ?

I didnt vote for obvious reasons.

I always thought the paste was more along the properties of cement, and drying was actually a good thing. And that the oil was only used to help get the product out of the tube and spread around easier. But it makes sense that it is also used to help facillitate filling in any inperfections on either metals.

 

[niconx]

I clean my entire heatsink about twice a year because of dust, that's more important. Your CPU fan can die if there is too much dust obstructing the airflow through the heatsink. This mainly applies to heatsinks like the True120 which have lots of fins close together.

 

[aweusx2]

my brother ran a rig with no thermal paste for 3+ years and temps where great, was with a xp120, he put it on to test parts and never took it apart since temps where good, with that said i usually give away a computer before i would need to reaply paste or take the rig apart and throw it to the spare parts piles, dont store computers with heatsinks attached so..

 

[cyclone3d]

There is no point. Thermal Paste does not go bad like produce does. So a freshly applied paste os not better or worse than one that has been set for a long while.

This is not true at all about the stuff OEM computer manufacturers use nor of the stuff that comes on the stock intel/amd/whatever heatsinks. I'm talking about the pre-applied stuff.

After a couple years or even less, the white junk will dry out and the processor will start to overheat very badly. Cleaning it off and using super cheap TIM lowers the temps by 10c+ most of the time.

The gray stuff starts seperating after a while and will cause hotspots that cause the CPU to overheat very badly.

And don't come back and say this doesn't happen. I have worked on hundreds of computers that this has happened to.