Replacing thermal paste on chipset heatsink - worth it?

train_wreck

Honorable
Nov 18, 2013
26
0
10,530
I have a water cooled build with a Maximus VI Formula board in a Cooler Master HAF-X. My intention was to have a super-quiet yet powerful system, so airflow is somewhat light inside the case, and I have noticed the motherboard's black chipset heatsink gets almost too hot to touch. Would removing the heatsink & applying some arctic silver improve this, over the stock installed thermal paste?
 
I did this on my mobo and while the relatively low temps took longer to cure the paste it was worth in in the long run. Right after i changed the thermal paste the temps were only about 1C lower but after a couple of weeks they went down a lot.

In my case the heatsink wasn't properly seated so thats why i got such an improvement - in your case it might not be that dramatic.