Pro tip: I used to think you could skip the thermal paste check on any PC that wasn't overheating. A customer brought in a machine from a coffee shop in Tacoma that was randomly shutting down, and the paste was completely dried out even though the temps looked okay in a quick test.

The shutdowns only happened under a very specific load, like when their point-of-sale software printed a receipt and updated inventory at the same time. A five-minute stress test showed normal temps, but a longer, mixed workload test I ran for about 20 minutes finally spiked the CPU. Re-pasting fixed it. Now I make it a point to check the paste condition on any machine over three years old, regardless of the initial temp read. What's the oldest dried-out paste you've seen that was still sort of working?

2 comments

2 Comments

eric_price14d agoTop Commenter

Yeah, @sanchez.robin's Optiplex story fits. It's like how people ignore small car noises until the whole thing dies on the highway.

sanchez.robin14d ago

I had the same mindset about paste until a 2012 Dell Optiplex came in with a weird boot loop. The thermal compound was basically dust, but it would still post for a minute.