Necessary to repaste processor?

[gregrocker]

It's a cool day here but working in forums alone has stayed in 30's so far today.

I was going to wait until it gets into the 50's before re-pasting but I also don't want to stress the processor unnecessarily.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I don't use AMD, but you may as well find out now rather than later what happens when it's under a load.

I'd use Prime 95 or a similar testing app known to put a serious load on the CPU and see what happens.

CPUs are designed to tolerate a lot of heat---current generation Intel's won't throttle themselves until the high 90s as I recall. People run them in the 60's for long periods of time when video rendering and other intensive tasks.

I'd research the design specs of that particular AMD and then pound it deliberately for an hour or so to see if it approached specified dangerous temps. If so, repaste or get another cooler--unless you never put a load on it in real life.

Mine got into the low 70s when severely pounded in a test, but never goes above mid 60s in actual usage.

Offhand, I wouldn't expect a repaste to help much if I understand correctly that it looked pretty good as is, particularly considering it's sitting in the 30s at low load.

 

[TVeblen]

As long as it's not total garbage (and the system runs that cool), I wouldn't worry about it.....Most of the difference between the pastes (that matters anyway) comes into play when you are doing the big overclocks....

Yes! Best answer. (I'd rep you again but I need to spread my love!)

Most of the hard hardware "rules" you hear of pertain to overclocking and high performance tweaking. For us regular folk (who wear tennis shoes and the occasional python boot), we can get away with the basics.