TIL cheap thermal paste can cost you hours of work

A mechanic buddy of mine told me he uses cheap thermal paste on his own gear and never has issues, so I tried it on a laptop repair last month. Three days later the thing overheated again and I had to redo the whole job with Arctic MX-4, has anyone else seen big differences between cheap and name brand paste?

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3 Comments

johnson.faith3mo ago

I mean, was it actually the paste failing or did you just not clean the old stuff off right the first time? I've seen so many people blame cheap paste when they really just rushed the prep work and left little gaps or old crusty paste underneath. There's definitely a difference in how long cheap stuff holds up under heavy load, especially in laptops that run hot all the time. But if it only lasted three days that sounds more like a bad application job than just the paste being cheap. Did you check if the heatsink was making full contact when you pulled it back apart?

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patriciah513mo ago

Honestly, I did the exact same thing once and that's totally what happened to me.

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the_robert3mo ago

Forgot I even doubted that until now, you're totally right.

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