I finally stopped guessing at thermal paste after a kid at the parts counter in Akron quoted me a number

Emery Fisher · 2026-10-08T08:50:03.338321+00:00

I was buying a tube of paste last month and the guy behind the counter, maybe 19 years old, said he replaces it every 18 months whether the temps look fine or not, because he got tired of pulling crusty stuff off GPUs. That stuck with me, so I started checking boards I serviced over a year ago and sure enough about half had paste that was dry and chalky even though the customer never noticed a problem. Now I just put the date on the tube with a sharpie. Does anyone here actually track paste age per machine, or do you wait for the temps to tell you?

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I finally stopped guessing at thermal paste after a kid at the parts counter in Akron quoted me a number | Computer Technicians - Free To Speak