Swapped thermal paste on my own machine for the first time in 8 years - temps dropped 12C

Used to just slap on whatever came with the cooler. Last week I finally tried Arctic MX-6 on my old i7-6700k and it went from hitting 85C under load to 73C. That's after I got a quote from a shop for $60 to do it. I had been putting it off since 2016 because I was scared of messing up the CPU pins. My buddy told me "just watch a YouTube video and take your time" - took maybe 20 minutes total. Anyone else been avoiding basic maintenance for way too long?

1 comments

1 Comment

ben4361mo ago

Man I know exactly what you mean. A buddy of mine had been running his old Ryzen 5 1600 with the stock thermal paste from 2017 and his CPU was hitting 90C under load playing Warzone. He finally swapped it out last month with some Thermal Grizzly stuff and dropped to 72C. He said he was sweating bullets the whole time thinking he was gonna bend a pin but it took him less than 30 minutes. Now he's mad at himself for waiting five years and letting his PC run that hot. It's crazy how a little bit of paste can make such a huge difference.