We’ve all heard it before: thermal paste needs to be replaced every 12 months, 24,
36, whatever.
But do you actually need to replace TIM?
Howdy howdy guys ponchato here, and welcome to a new series called “Quick Questions”.
It’s called quick questions because it’s about questions that are quick.
Let’s get started.
The test system for this is a practically ancient i5-750 build that I put together around
7 years ago.
The thermal paste has not been changed once in that time, so this really is a test of
the extreme case.
The processor is cooled by an old Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus, though I did replace the stock
fan a few years ago.
Since we’re only testing the thermal paste though, the cooler itself doesn’t really matter.
All we’re looking for is a change in temperatures at idle, gaming, and stress testing.
Oh, and all of these tests were performed in a room at near-constant 24C.
First I had to remove the heat sink and the old thermal paste.
As you can probably tell, this wasn’t the stock fan that came with the cooler.
The old fan died on me a while ago, so I replaced it with a Thermaltake 140mm fan.
Partly out of curiosity, partly because that’s just what I had lying around.
Anyway the fan came off easily with simple plastic clips that hold it to the heat sink.
Fortunately by this time in the PC cooling timeline, installation was already pretty
simple.
Four screws held down the retention clip and after unscrewing them, the heat sink came
off.
Before switching out the thermal paste I ran some tests to get the temperatures.
At idle, the i5-750 sat around 32C.
While playing CSGO, CPU temperature varied but generally hovered around 54C.
Finally during stress testing with Prime95, the i5 peaked at 63C.
Next I cleaned up and replaced the TIM.
As you can see, I went pretty light on the thermal paste when I built this system.
While wiping off the old Arctic Silver 5 paste, I noticed that it was extremely viscous; closer
to peanut butter than actual thermal paste.
Maybe thermal paste really does dry out?
I wiped off the CPU, and then cleaned it with cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol.
In an everyday build you probably don’t even need to do that, but because we’re
specifically testing temperatures and there might only be slight variations, I wanted
to be sure.
Next I wiped off the bottom of the Hyper 212 Plus and cleaned it with the rubbing alcohol.
One thing that has changed in the heat sinks of today is that the space between direct
contact heat pipes is much, much smaller.
There were probably 1 or 2 millimeters of space between the pipes and base of the heat
sink, mostly filled with old thermal paste.
I didn’t clean them out perfectly because I didn’t want to get in there with something
that could scratch the base, and those areas probably wouldn’t conduct much heat anyway
since there’d be such a large thermal paste gap.
Once it was all cleaned up, I added a drop of Deepcool Z5 thermal paste to the processor.
The best way to apply thermal paste is one drop in the center, maybe half the size of
a pea.
This makes it so that when you put the heat sink back on it pushes any air pockets away
from the center, whereas if you spread the paste beforehand there’s a good chance air
will get trapped.
I positioned the retention arm on top of the base, placed the heat sink on the processor
and moved it around a bit to spread the paste, then tightened all the retention clips.
I removed the two closest DIMMs so I could reinstall the fan, clipped it on, and then
plugged it in.
Come to think of it, this was actually one of the easiest to install heat sinks I’ve
ever used.
After getting it all setup again, I ran the temperature tests one more time.
This time at idle, the processor sat at 31C.
While playing CSGO, it reached 54C.
Finally, while stress testing the processor peaked at 61C.
So that’s a 2 degree drop at idle, no change while gaming (though CPU temperature varies
quite a bit during games), and 2 degree drop under max load.
Based on all this, I can say that thermal paste actually does show signs of aging.
It’s very subtle, but there is a difference.
As for how often you’d need to replace it, that’s harder to say.
If you want the absolute lowest temperatures or you’re running a hot overclock, I’d
recommend that you replace thermal paste every 2 years.
If you’re changing it that often, you can be pretty much certain that you’re always
running with the best possible temperature.
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Links to the thermal paste I used and the tower cooler I recommend, the Deepcool GAMMAXX
400, are in the description below.
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and if you have any quick questions you want answered, leave them in the comments below.
Thanks for watching, I hope I helped, and I’ll see you in the next video.