New thermal compound on aging 5850? (higher temps)

[theNoid]

Looking for some general input from the community. Here are some things to keep in mind as to why I am looking to do this.

Hardware : Diamond 5850
Idle temp : 58c
Load temp : 86-90c
Load temp w/900/1200 OC : 90-92c

note : Games running good, but due to higher temps my stock GPU fan is revving up to compensate and combat heat. This is annoying and it gets rather loud.

1. I discovered my intake fan up front had come unplugged, I thought this was the culprit.. fixed it but only noticed temps drop about 1-2c.
2. Airflow is good in the case, I cleaned it last night and validated good space.
3. Ran tests w/o any overclock, still high(er) temps.
4. Room temp is normal
5. CPU/RAM temps are very low and average across the board.
6. My GPU temps used to be 40(s)C idle and 70(s)C load a long while back.

I'm starting to think its possible that my aging OEM thermal compound may not be performing as well as it used to. Can years of overclocking cause this? Anyways I was thinking of taking the card apart to swap the compound but before doing that or even spending $5 I figured I'd ask and see what you guys/gals thought?

 

[pharmecist]

I had the exact same situation and changed my old 5850 reference's compound with MX-4 and my temperatures dropped by about 3 degrees when bitcoin mining.

 

[theNoid]

Awesome, thanks for the input. I was looking at MX-4 as well.