[SOLVED] Been 3 years, time to renew thermal paste on Stock AMD Ryzen 5 1600?

[deNameMo]

To be honest I dont know how old my components are, maybe a bit more than 3 years?

Should I remove the stock amd fan/heatsink and replace the stock amd thermal paste with artic MX-4 or does it not matter?

I mean some AMD community site goes as far as to say that 12-18months is the sweat spot which I find crazy.

Some say, dont bother it will serve up to a decade.

PS: I do not desire to purchase a new CPUs for now.

 

[Darkbreeze]

If you don't have thermal problems, then it's really not "essential" that you do anything. If you do, then it is probably a good idea. As the old adage goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If you haven't bothered to monitor your CPU thermals lately, it might be a good idea to do so in order to have an idea whether it needs it or not. If you are remaining under 80°C with a full ALL-CORE load like Prime95 Small FFT (ALL AVX instructions disabled or offset used in BIOS) or OCCT small data set (Same), for a 15 minute run then you are fine. If you are under maybe 70°C max while running your most demanding normally used applications or games, for an extended period of time, or have noticed no changes in your thermal response lately, then you are probably fine.

Of course, it never really hurts to preemptively take care of such things either, so that they don't turn into a problem, but that's entirely up to you if you aren't seeing any existing issues.

 

[drea.drechsler]

If you don't have thermal problems, then it's really not "essential" that you do anything. If you do, then it is probably a good idea. As the old adage goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
...

^^^^THAT^^^^

Of course, if you're someone (like me!) who learns by doing you can go right ahead and do it anyway. It's a good opportunity to learn how to unmount old CPU coolers without bending CPU pins. And if you do it anyway, bending some CPU pins is a good way to learn how to straighten them. Breaking one or two pins makes a good opportunity to learn about spec-ing out a new CPU, and updating BIOS if you need that. And let's not get into learning how to identify/fix damage/replace other parts if you have slippy fingers (like I do) and drop the cooler or tools or cell phone (when taking a picture of the damage done dropping a tool) on them.

I've done it all over the years. That's why I'm a full-on believer in: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" even though I often ignore it when I want to learn something new.

 

[Darkbreeze]

That's why I'm a full-on believer in: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" even though I often ignore it when I want to learn something new.

So say we all.