Changing Thermal Paste in tower PC

[WoodPeckr]

Have a Dell 8000 i7 Studio XPS tower. Got it in 2009 and it still runs great until a few weeks ago. The fan cooling the heat-sink over the CPU would spin up at very high speeds a lot. PC would then act a bit wonky, slowing down and stalling. Never did that before. Talked with salesmen at store purchased from. They said it sounds like the thermal paste may have dried up and need replacing. Never heard of this before. I mean this Dell i7 is 17 years old but ran like new! Some sales staff there said they replace thermal paste every few years. Others say this is normal PM that some do every couple years and were surprised mine lasted as long as it did before causing any heat issues. Dell must have used an excellent thermal paste back then! Confirmed all this after researching this issue online and on YouTube.

So ended up getting a 4 gram tube of, Artic MX-6 New formula, a highly rated thermal compound on Amazon. Followed how to do this as shown on YouTube videos and replaced the original thermal paste. Since doing this the cooling fan has not once kicked up into the very high speeds as it was doing frequently before and the PC runs a lot better.

Question is, has anyone else had this issue? I do clean up the insides of this PC on a regular basis but have never heard of this thermal paste issue before.

 

[Valcazar]

It's a thing that happens.
Usually you just replace it when you replace the heat sink - but since this is 17 years old, I'm not surprised the paste gave out.

 

[WoodPeckr]

The OEM heat sink was in excellent condition. Just cleaned and vacuumed it out and reused it. Was just surprised when one sales guy said he replaces his thermal paste every couple years.

 

[Valcazar]

The OEM heat sink was in excellent condition. Just cleaned and vacuumed it out and reused it. Was just surprised when one sales guy said he replaces his thermal paste every couple years.

That guy is probably an obsessive. Maybe he overclocks his machine a lot so running heat means a lot to him.

 

[HungSowel]

OEMs typically do not use good thermal paste, 17 years is a very very long time for a PC so requiring a repasting is not a surprise. I assume most PCs last on average ~4-5 years before being replaced, so repasting is not something people need to deal with.

 

[goldez]

Reapplying thermal paste is common, yea. People who apply it every couple of years do it more as a just in case versus necessity because they want it to run well consistently and not wait until it runs into an issue like that

 

[WoodPeckr]

OEMs typically do not use good thermal paste, 17 years is a very very long time for a PC so requiring a repasting is not a surprise. I assume most PCs last on average ~4-5 years before being replaced, so repasting is not something people need to deal with.

Well what ever they used it was pretty good lasting 17 years.

This Dell i7 Studio XPS has been rock solid. It was a 1st Gen i7. Some here thought it was overkill back then. Got it hoping it would last and it sure did. It came with Windows Vista. Which I had no problem with. With any M$ OS you have to do proper maintenance for optimal performance, like, have CCleaner to clear out all the junk. Run Malwarebytes and have a good AV to protect it. Did that and had little trouble with M$ but was moving to Linux with doesn't require any on that, has no Registry to foul-up and is FREE! At this point have NO need for Windows and see no Reason to get Windows 11 with all the negatives posted about it. Linux nowadays is about as easy to pickup as a Mac OS and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg being FREE!

The only PM with Linux is to run Bleach Bit once a month to clear out all the junk like CCleaner does and you are good to go.

 

[goldez]

Well what ever they used it was pretty good lasting 17 years.

This Dell i7 Studio XPS has been rock solid. It was a 1st Gen i7. Some here thought it was overkill back then. Got it hoping it would last and it sure did. It came with Windows Vista. Which I had no problem with. With any M$ OS you have to do proper maintenance for optimal performance, like, have CCleaner to clear out all the junk. Run Malwarebytes and have a good AV to protect it. Did that and had little trouble with M$ but was moving to Linux with doesn't require any on that, has no Registry to foul-up and is FREE! At this point have NO need for Windows and see no Reason to get Windows 11 with all the negatives posted about it. Linux nowadays is about as easy to pickup as a Mac OS and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg being FREE!

The only PM with Linux is to run Bleach Bit once a month to clear out all the junk like CCleaner does and you are good to go.

Could be it was really good or it wasn't under extraneous use both would definitely help in lasting a whopping 17 years with no issues

 

[Lisandro]

I never had to change the Cpu paste, back in the day some of the PC's didn't have thermal paste. But its easy to re apply if you wanted to. I think some MB detect you're doing extra work and make the fan go a little faster. I just put a tiny drop with the old one and smear it around and it spreads well. But googling it now I see some sites say to change it if the Temp is rising. i also have a I7 and recently changed the heatsink and fan because the old stock one was lagging and I didn't want to take a chance. The new aftermarket heatsink is big and now I see on the bios that the fan is running slower. I paid about $6 for it.

 

[WoodPeckr]

I use Psensor - Temperature Monitor which shows temps and pc functions in Linux.

 

[alekzandrios]

Its a mid-high spec prebuilt workhorse for the time, 17 years is way too long to replace paste... If you're the average person today. The story isnt surprising if you aren't really putting any significant load on it. Kind of like milage on a car, city miles (heavy loads like video editing or 3D work and video games) are much different than highway miles (grandpa just browsing porn and doing his taxes) and will effect your parts (including thermal paste) in different ways. If you're running a mid-high end nowadays, you're most likely gaming and will want to replace paste every few years at most, but if you're still just grandpa browsing porn and doing his taxes, you're probably still good for another 17 years but by then you'll likely have bigger problems like failing components.

You should probably replace your power supply at the very least (not only for power efficiency but because a new one will handle minor power issues better, protecting your components) but should consider new fans and a new hard drive. Good on you for being on Linux, I'm personally on Mint ever since win10 support dropped.