I keep seeing people recommend thermal paste reapplying every year like it's oil changes

It feels like every other post or comment in here says you should replace your thermal paste annually or your CPU will cook itself. I've been doing computer repair out of my garage in Cincinnati for about 6 years now, and I can count on one hand how many times I've seen dried paste actually cause a problem. Most of those were cheap prebuilt office machines from 2010 that had the factory stuff turn into glue. I pulled a heatsink off a customer's i7-4790 last month that had been running since 2015 with the original paste, temps were fine at 72C under load. Before you tell someone to go buy a tube of Arctic Silver every Black Friday, check their actual load temps first. Who else has seen a system run 5+ years on factory paste without issues?

2 comments

2 Comments

emma_flores1mo ago

and I'm with you all the way on this. I've got an old AMD Phenom II rig in the basement that's been running stock paste since 2012 and it still idles around 40C even after all these years. The whole "yearly refresh" thing feels like someone trying to sell extra thermal paste more than any real need.

wendy1311mo ago

Honestly, @emma_flores is proving exactly what most of us already know. That whole "change your paste every year" thing is just people trying to sell you stuff you don't need. 40C after over a decade on stock paste is totally fine, your chips aren't gonna melt. If temps are staying under 80-85 under load, there's zero reason to mess with it. These companies know most folks never bother to check their temps anyway, so they scare you into buying something. You're better off just leaving it alone until you actually see a problem. Common sense wins again.