Debate: Is using thermal paste from old CPUs actually fine for fixing old gadgets?

I keep seeing people on here toss perfectly good vintage computers because they think they need fresh thermal paste, but my 2003 Dell ran fine for 5 years after I reused paste from a dead laptop. A buddy swears that reusing it causes overheating and kills chips, but I've never seen proof. Who's got actual experience with this gamble?

3 comments

3 Comments

jana88118d ago

...and honestly I think your buddy is just repeating something he heard without testing it himself. Old paste might be crusty and not transfer heat AS well, but for a vintage gadget running at low clock speeds it's usually fine. What kind of temperature spike are we actually talking about though? Like did you ever measure the difference between fresh paste and reused paste on that Dell? That's the real question.

rileygarcia18d ago

The heat transfer thing is more about the paste drying out and becoming crumbly, not just crusty. Once it pulls away from the die, you get air pockets which are terrible insulators. On a Dell from like 2004 or 2005, I measured a 12-15 degree Celsius difference on the CPU between old dried paste and fresh Arctic Silver. That's not nothing even for a slow Pentium M, especially if the room is warm.

kai_webb9117d ago

Right? "Air pockets which are terrible insulators" is the key part people miss. It’s not just about being crusty, it physically pulls away.