Found out that old thermal paste can actually turn into a hard crust that stops heat transfer completely

I was reading a post on a hardware forum last night and a guy showed a picture of a 5 year old CPU with paste that had basically turned to stone. Has anyone else pulled off a cooler and found that rock solid layer? How did you clean it off?

2 comments

2 Comments

sean_murray10d ago

Guess it wasn't just dusty, it was petrified.

henry_kelly5410d ago

Hold on, are we sure it's actually petrified and not just some really well-preserved organic material? Honest question, because what if the dust settled in a way that just looks rock-hard but is still brittle and crumbly underneath? I've seen old electronics where the grime bonded with the plastic over decades, making it seem fossilized when it's really just greasy dirt mixed with plastic degradation. Ngl, a lot of people jump to "petrified" when it's just extreme dust compaction from humidity and time. Tbh, unless someone did a scratch test or a chemical analysis, I'd bet it's still mostly biodegradable stuff like skin cells and pollen, not actual stone. Just saying, "petrified" sounds dramatic but might be giving the dust too much credit.