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The thermal paste trick I thought was nonsense until I tried it
I always figured the 'spread it with a credit card' method was just overkill, you know? Been doing the pea-sized dot in the middle for like 8 years on builds. But last month I had a Ryzen 7 running hot at 85C under load, so I gave the credit card spread a shot on a clean re-paste. Dropped temps by 7 degrees idle and 12 under load, which honestly surprised me. Has anyone else had that much luck switching methods, or was my chip just finicky?
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hollyl2520d ago
Doubt it made that big a difference on its own, probably just the fresh paste.
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lilyp3720d agoMost Upvoted
Nah nah, fresh paste def helps but the thermal compound itself matters more than ppl think lol. I swapped from some random tube to NT-H2 on my 5600X and dropped like 5C under load even with the same application method. It's not just about spreading it, the actual material makes a real diff in conducting heat. But you're right that fresh paste does help too, old dried out stuff sucks.
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mary_west20d ago
Hollyl25, you bring up a good point but I actually read a test from a tech site where they compared different pastes using the same application on the same CPU. The NT-H2 and Kryonaut beat out the cheap stuff by a solid 4-7 degrees even when both were fresh. It's the actual filler material in the paste that does the heavy lifting for heat transfer. So yeah, fresh paste helps a ton but the ingredients inside matter more than people give them credit for.
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