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Always hated thermal paste reapplication until I tried it on a 12 year old Dell
Had an Optiplex 990 that kept thermal throttling even after cleaning the fan. Decided to repaste the CPU as a last resort and the temps dropped 20 degrees. Now I'm wondering how many other "dead" machines I threw out that just needed fresh paste.
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aaron7089h ago
Man, I used to think thermal paste was just hype until I had an old HP Pavilion that wouldn't even boot. @kareng27 I just grabbed some Arctic MX-4 from a drawer, slapped it on, and that machine ran another two years like nothing. Made me wonder how many perfectly good PCs I tossed just because I didn't bother with a five dollar tube of goo.
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kareng2710h ago
Did you use a specific brand of paste or just whatever you had laying around? I've always wondered if the expensive stuff actually makes a difference on older hardware or if it's all the same.
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