Chosen Solution
I have late 2015 i7 4GHz and in normal usage in a cool room cpu temperature is around 40c to 50c! If I use lightroom classic cpu temperature goes to 99c,100c .. and then it may get lower to 80c and so on .. Do I need to replace cpu thermal paste after 6 years normal usage? My iMac is open since I have replaced blade ssd and sata ssd.
While Apple doesn’t use the best TIM, its life span is around four years. While the effectiveness of the heat transfer is important, we tend to get too stuck up on this little detail forgetting the bigger one DUST & DEBRIS! Both clog up the fan blades and the transfer fins so the heat sink is not effective in shedding the heat it has amassed. Let’s use a model to see why cleaning the dust and debris is the more important action. I have three buckets and the first two have a hole in them and are stacked on top of the one that doesn’t. So now we pour water into the top bucket and the amount of water I pour is likewise exiting to the next bucket as well as the next. Now lets clog the top buckets hole over time the bucket will overflow over the lip of the bucket making a mess! This would be the effect of the TIM failing. Now what happens if the second bucket is clogged this would be the effect of the fan and heatsink failing. Now lets change the buckets to closed tanks with solid piping which is closer to what we have as the failure of the second container will allow the water (heat) to backup to the upper container! This is why people think the TIM has failed when in truth its the junk collecting internally blocking the effectiveness of the cooling system. So unless you are a serious music, photo or video producer pressing your system hard or a heavy gamer I wouldn’t worry about the TIM yet maybe next year. I would focus on cleaning the dust and debris! To help you see things install a good thermal monitoring app like TG Pro I find this app to be one of the best!
6 years is the normal frequency when you should be replacing thermal paste, but that number goes down when you’re running applications that demand a lot of CPU usage on a daily. I’d say that a reasonable frequency would maybe be every 2 years or so. You can also follow this guide for instructions on how to apply thermal paste. How to Apply Thermal Paste Also, as a precaution I’d make sure that your cooling fans are clean and are properly spinning.
Hi! I would say it depends on the quality of the thermal paste, but change the paste each year seems to me the best solution and so each year you can evaluate by yourself about the quality of the thermal paste you used…
I generally change my paste immediately when i get a new device and then once every 1-2 years just to keep things fresh.
