Do You HAVE To Use New CPU Paste? Can You Reuse Thermal Paste? 

SEVENTY TWO POINT NINE

Thanks for doing the tests that no one else does. That's really quite a valuable service.

Wtf how did I just spend an hour watching like five videos on a row from you on thermal paste. Incredibly well done tests and analysis

Totally agree with some of the comments here, I really have not seen a full report on this. Thanks for posting the video. I always reuse the paste while testing builds and only apply fresh paste once I'm done with the build. Best of luck on your channel!

I love your approach. Extremely useful tests!

5:19 Wow what a great video ! Exactly what I was looking for. I just put my pc into another case and by accident I mounted CPU cooler mounts in the wrong way, I had to pull and remount and had no paste left and I went for it. I was worried about temps, but I guess everything is fine. Thank you for the video !

Yeah, I've been doing this before and it was interesting to see this testing.

dude this video make laugh somehow, great work on test 5 lol, I subscribed

Thanks man! You’re the only person that made a video on this video topic, you’re a chad.

Thnx nick i needed this LOVE

Cool to see the data. Thumbs up.

Great tests. Thank you

Thanks, that actually answers a separate question that I had. My pre-built system, is running ok, but I was concerned that they might not have applied the thermal paste correctly. But as you said, if its running ok, don't worry. Thanks.

very nice tests :D

Thanks for this video. I am a first time builder and I had some difficulty pushing down my AIO pump head onto the chip so I had to lift it up and try again. Thermal paste amount seemed right, but I wanted to make sure if it was okay to just put the AIO pump back on and not to get off the thermal paste and re-apply. Cheers!

Thanks I messed up my wiring and had to redo it and the nearest store is like 4-5 miles away so this helps a lot 😊

Such a good research that seem like no one else seriously did it

i cant say i personally have ever reused my thermal paste, but its good to know if i had to in a pinch, i could. i think i have seen linus do it in one of his videos as well.

6:40 "Whatever the reason is, you've asked, so I want to answer it as best as I can". A small detail in this video that I appreciate very much. Great attitude towards the viewers!

Surprised you did not do your smooth spread the old paste (test 1.5) to cooler and die once the cooler was removed. Curious if smoothing in between had any impact on the old paste.

A few years ago I took my (then) ~5 year old video card (980ti) to a repair shop to replace the VRM. Before then I hadn't repasted the GPU yet, and the maximum temp was around 68-70*C. After the repair it was pushing mid 80's. I repasted the GPU and then it was back down to high 60's. If it's been a long time between applying paste, I would suggest redoing it.

i love your ideas, looks common sense but, nobody does videos about them not just ideas, well presented data again, well explained, wow, really nice quality video. and this tells you a 30 yeras old computers experience guy.

Thank you for testing this. Some data to look at is way better than not knowing at all. I am concerned that your tests showed extremely (categorically) different results for the change being tested: "re-applying/re-mashing the same paste after initial application". Worse in the first situation, better in the second situation. A few hypotheses of mine to explain your data: 1 would be: your error bars are actually so huge as to mean that all readings are within margin of error and essentially meaningless. (I don't think it's this, but I also don't think it would be worth investigating other hypotheses without ruling this out first.) Hypothesis 1 can be investigated by controlling more vairables... such as using a fixed fan speed, and maybe using more strictly repeatable workloads, and/or controlling room temperature or using delta from ambient temp rather than raw temps. 2 would be: that re-mashing paste is a crapshoot, and if you re-mashed the same blob of fresh paste several times, your numbers would be all over the place. 3 would be: Freshness makes the difference... Re-mashing old Noctua paste is bad for some reason, perhaps the viscosity after it dries makes for worse gap filling and more lumpy paste (poorer pressure distribution) or more air trapped in the paste. And by association with this hypothesis, re-mashing fresh paste is potentially good, for some reason. Maybe the low viscosity just likes being agitated more, to get pushed into pits/grooves on the IHS and cooler cold plate, or more even paste distribution for better pressure distribution? If hypothesis 3 is correct, then mashing old paste should consistently make things worse, and mashing fresh paste should consistently make things better, but I might expect it to level out as you appreach the ideal paste spread/state... FURTHERMORE as a level deeper into hypothesis three, more wiggling might similarly help with fresh paste? And maybe simply wiggling the cooler with old paste would worsen then results? I find it very interesting that 3-week-old paste can be scraped off, put on plastic wrap and re-applied and (coincidentally? not coincidentally?) do or tie the best of all the applications. Maybe paste settles into position, or dries out only in some places, so re-mixig and re-applying "rejuvinates" it? Or maybe that gets rid of air bubbles/poor pressure areas from re-mashing the stiffer paste? Maybe 3 weeks isn't that long and this is noise in the data, or we are seeing effects of an as-yet-unidentified, "invisible" variable? Feel free to NOT test this, becaue I agree as long as you've got some paste on there that's not like dry and cracking you're probably fine. That said, if this is the content you want to make more of, there's some follow-up ideas for it and as a fan o science in general I think it would be neat. Worth it? IDK. I'm already grateful for what you've done so far. Makes my "want to know even though I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter" type of brain a little more satisfied.

Useful test. Back to basics. Debunk old myths.

When I upgraded my CPU, after all the installation, I got blank screen, so I thought my CPU was not seated properly or something (It was not, but rather my display cable was not plugged properly). So I dismantle the CPU, cooler and everything, set it aside with the paste still on and tested the mobo with previous CPU (which of course still give me a blank screen). Afterward I changed the CPU back and jammed the cooler back in with the old paste and all. And it's still work wonderfully to this day.

I actually did it and the best way is to reuse the old paste (talking about months) and spread it evenly on the cpu and the heatsink with your finger inside a bag, it worked way too good and i got the same temperature readings as if it was new

thanks man im still gonna order it but that will do until the new stuff gets here

Phew! Assembled my cooler yesterday and needed to remove it due to assembly issues. And been eating myself up ever since.

Hi nick, i have a question, i've bought my laptop about a year ago now (not brand new, used ofc from a local shop), and it has two GPUs, and integrated one , and a dedicated one. The problem is, whenever i run a game on the performance GPU, after a few minutes, the laptop shuts down due to overheat (90°C+), and i've confirmad it with a software (corecpu). I'm wondering if the laptop is too old that it never had its thermal paste replaced. Note that i i play the same game on the integrated GPU, the heat doesn't go above 80°C and runs idle at around 50 to 60°C Do i need to change thermal paste ? Specs: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4510U CPU @ 2.00GHz 2.60 GHz Intel HD Graphics 4400 AMD Radeon R7 M260 8 GB of RAM 480 GB SSD

As stated in another comment: Bought a tube of CoolerMaster MasterGel Maker back when it was considered one of the top two or three pastes (2017? 2018?). Definitely not later than that. Never opened that tube and checked the paste in April 2022 when I built my current PC. It looked perfectly fine - hadn't gone out of solution/suspension, color was normal and viscosity felt normal, too. Been using it since then and checked the tube again about two weeks ago when I needed to re-paste the CPU. Still looked totally normal and fine, so I used it again - and my temps are pretty good with it. Using a Lian Li Galahad 240 on a mildly OCed 12600K, resulting in near constant 100% usage and ~135W CPU power-draw, no core went higher than 70/71°C during a full Cinebench run - most of them were more like mid to high 60s.

I HAVE JUST CHANGED MY PASTE AND CLEANED MY LAPTOP TODAY. THANKS TO YOUR VIDEOS I NOW HAVE A COOLER PC. I was actually listening tonyour video during the whole process. 😅 😊 Thank you!

You can use turpentine to revitalize dry thermal paste. You can feel the paste dissolving in the turpentine when you rub it in the paste. Not for the faint of heart, it can drip if you do not pay attention. You can make the paste as drippy as you like and the contact is perfect if the paste is drippy enough.

Metal to metal conducts heat better than the thermal past does. That explains why the temperatures drop slightly when there's a thinner layer of past applied. Either by using less, or by removing the cooler, and placing it back, squeezing a little but more of the past aside. The only thing the paste does is fill in the tiny air gaps from any scratches, toolmarks (even those invisible to the eye) and oxidization (however little). That explains why older paste needs to be replaced after you remove the cooler: it gets thicker, and air gets trapped between cooler and CPU when you don't re-apply the paste. The results are pretty clear in the tests in this video ;) If you have real old and dry paste, it still will work reasonably well if the layer is thin enough, and the cooler hasn't been removed, because it still keeps air out. When you remove a cooler and the past is really dry, you're guaranteed to get a LOT of air trapped, causing overheating problems. No paste is still a LOT better than dry, cracked past.

You will be providing valuable information to thousands of people who forgot thermal paste, for years to come. Thank you. P.S.: I definitely didn’t forget thermal paste, get pissed off, and prayed someone would say I could use my old paste that is still in the syringe.😂

I have often heard that excess thermal paste can lead to adhesion between the CPU and cooler with possible socket pin damage upon forced removal (turning the computer back to heat the paste is then recommended). I suspect the problem here is that the excess squeezed out paste tends to dry out and harden. It's unfortunate that this area is hard to see and clean.

nice experiment

got to try dried out thermal paste now

Have you done a video on different quality of pastes?

The test is the proof. Thx

I very much appreciate this video. My cooler kept tilting forward on my CPU while I was trying to install it (bequiet's stupid bar to hold down the cooler is a nightmare to install) and I was worried about high temps.

The differences is due to varying atmospheric ambient conditions. TP can be reused if it's still fluid and simply give the heatsink a 'twist' to seat the paste. Air bubbles is a nonsensical worry. Been doing this before you were born. And now, I just reach for my bottle of Permatex Anti-Seize with aluminum. (there is a copper version, for 'high heat situations' ie. exhausts). I find no difference from when I used commercial grade Dow-Corning heatsink compound. And I'm not going to spend luxury pricing for Thermal Grizzly or liquid metal.

Tnx kind sir

Keep going on bruh

Wanted to add another Ram chip after 4 years, realised that I have mounted the cooler in such a way that is was blocking the Ram slot, was wondering will I have to spend another 10 dollars or can I just remove and remount the stock cooler. And this video helped a lot!!

AHAHA finally the answer to the question I've always wondered since I was a noob pc builder, also Schrodinger's thermal paste coverage 😂😂 thank you so much for testing this, installing heatsinks has been the most nerve wracking thing for me cause I always worried and thought if I mounted it wrong and had to remove it I'd have to wipe off the paste, wasting it, and start over and apply new paste again before putting the heatsink back on or else air bubbles would be deadly to the cpu, now I'm relieved knowing it makes no difference.

i have scraped off and reused paste from 7 year old laptop. just mixed a drop of engine oil to make it like a paste, temps were the same as earlier,

Very useful vid, thanks! Nice to see Lex Luthor's lost cousin doing vids on computers xD.

All I can say is if you remove the cooler with paste that has been on there for awhile and remount it, it will literally burn a hole in the AIO. I did this in 2012 and i still have the cooler. Think it was an I7-870

Nick this series is so good. I just bought a pc and was so confused on what to do. I never installed a liquid cooler before. I have a question. I don't know if you made a video on it or not. I will check. Is there any difference between branded thermal paste and locally available thermal paste. I live in a third world country so buying corsair thermal paste is like 20$ that is alot. But local china available thermal paste is like 0.05 cents. One that i bought was Hainziye company. From what i read on reddit mostly. The difference is like 3 C degree at most. You look like the perfect person to ask to test it out. 😅

In the old Arctic Silver days, people "tinted" their cpus ( massaged paste onto both CPU and cooler after a deep clean) to be sure any nano crevices were stuffed with paste. Then the excess was wiped off leaving a faint trace on both surface. then a rice grain size of paste was placed on the center of the CPU before clampdown. That ensured a thinnest layer of paste, while at the same time, didn't miss any spots. From what it looks like (everywhere on YT), that has gone completely out of fashion?

I think you'd notice more of a difference on laptops with smaller Dies. I've used the same paste in my Mac Pro, even after sitting exposed to air overnight. Temps were fine.

that is so good

How did you control for ambient temperature?

of course you can re-use old thermal paste. heck, I ran a system for almost a year on zinc diaper rash cream because I wasn't able to get my hands on some real thermal paste (tough times)

Honestly I just use a bit too much paste and leave it be. If temps are good, that's all that matters to me. You could remove the cooler and check coverage, but as we saw here it can increase temps, so I'd have that thought in the back of my head the whole time.

I always wondered if you built a 1 inch tall cube housing oving the CPU and just filled it to the top with thermal paste, will you still need a cooling fan after that?

Lol. I’m actually here bc building a revised built and had to flip the CPU block. Twice (Distroplate idiocy). The second time I didn’t bother reapplying paste. So too bad you didn’t test how it would turn out if you lift it, turn it and then mount it again with the same paste. That’s without the system ever been on. But I’m probably fine. We’ll see when I finally boot it up. 😂

Brilliant

Can you tell me, i have old Thermal paste for CPU and i already used it once 5 years ago, and i closed(sealed) the syringe(tube) well, Is it okay to use it again now after staying for 5 years in a dark lonely box ^^ ?

Taking a peak doesn't ruin the coverage, I took a peak and it spread alright and put the cooler back on and still get low temperatures

I just swapped my CPU’s from two of my old laptops and left the thermal compound on them By the way both computers have just had the cpu swapped basically one laptop CPU went in the other and that other laptop returned to the previous laptop it’s old CPU. also the laptop that I bought from eBay has 3 YEAR OLD THERMAL COMPOUND and it wasn’t even dried up. That was because it wasn’t even used for like two and a half years as the previous owner said due to a unknown fault. I got it for CHEAP and found out that the issue was just a dead CMOS battery. Swapped it out and it has been working since without a problem. I even had the stupidest idea and decided to put that thing to its limits and to my surprise IT DID NOT EVEN BREAK surely it was very hot but cooled off quite quickly due to the nice big cooling fan inside of it. It’s a OLD LAPTOP from 2006 and it has some serious performance with Windows 10 on it

I think I killed my old laptop by ripping off the heatsink and putting it back on without reapplying thermal paste. It was cold when I did so too, so the heatsink made a loud "CLANG!" when I actually got it off lol. After a month or two, it started shutting down unexpectedly and having a blinking keyboard lights boot error. It still powers on and boots, but only for about 10-15 mins. I could purchase a new cpu for it, but idk if it's worth spending $10-15 and not fixing the issue... Besides, I removed the laptop screen entirely since the video converter crapped out (either an overheating issue or friction from the wire routing). It needs VGA (and HDMI - optional) connected to boot and has wifi wires dangling from the screen mounting hole. Just a crazy looking keyboard, but it was fun while it lasted! Those old dv4's and dv7's can be found for super cheap now and are actually pretty decent for emulation or old gaming.

Wait so if I use old thermal paste is it fine?

Greg Salazar has a new video out on what happens when your pump doesn't run. Worth a peek.

I did this myself recently aftet installing a led screen pump (the image does not rotate which I mean come on devs) i had put the screws till i noticed out it was wrong orientation. So had to remove the screws re oriented and put it back on fck it. Which is what actually got me to this video. And yeah indeed temps are normal, some hours gaming or high presets no higher than 70 c. So i guess its true. And it was a 13700k those things run hot af.

Today went to install a new cpu and wife had cleaned up and tossed my pate box..... still had wet new paste on the cooler as the cpu was no good that was previously installed and not ran... I reused the paste and it all checks well.... cane searching to wonder if I wasn't alone here lol

do it again, but this time scoop up the paste and place as pea method

Schrodinger's paste is not real, but Schrodinger's application is real

You can know what the spread is like, just put the cooler on and then take it off... turn it around and put it on again... then turn it again and mount it ;)

This has been an extremely helpful benchmark for determining whether or not I should replace the thermal paste on the CPU of the Nintendo Switch when installing an HWFLY or SX CORE to my system. Not only does this apply to a PC, but any other system that utilizes a high powered CPU.

Reusing thermal paste is actually a hilarious idea that not much people would think of, kudos for that idea.

Haha, nice.

How about a thermal pad instead of thermal paste? GPU use thermal pads, why not CPU? Also, is one thermal pad better than another?

Test 5 shows, you don't need much paste to seal gaps between the head spreader and a quality cooler....

So, shrodinger's paste is... Shrodinger's shrodinger's paste. More or less.

its all chaos theory & randomness. when you do this each time the paste has different variants & pockets so its not viable info...

You don't really have to change your car oil or filter either on the manufacturer's specs and can get away with not doing so way past 12 months but doesn't mean because you can you should. I am sure there are differences in pastes and maybe the cheaper ones lose their efficiency even quicker than the ones you are reporting here. Interesting video. For the sake of a few cents and a minute or two I think it confirms I'll keep replacing mine.

Too much paste is definitely a problem u need the thinnest smallest amount of paste between the two surfaces but yea if u have adequate mounting pressure then the excess will just spill out.

Pretty damn cool. Nope...not intended.

A

Negligible.

why is half your moustache white? get some paste on your face?