Question Thermal Paste; When to reapply?

[rcsverige]

I got my ASUS Dual RTX 3060 12gb OC V2 almost 2 years ago now.... I use my PC around 10-12 hours a day for work and I game around 1-3 hours a day depending on the day. I was wondering when it is ideal to reapply thermal paste? Usually games run around 60-67c but recently I have been playing G.A.M.M.A and noticed that it would get to 70-71c... I know that these temps are not bad and I know that it could just be the demand of G.A.M.M.A but it got me thinking about the GPU and its thermal paste application.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

ASUS Dual RTX 3060 12gb OC V2
Ryzen 7 5800x3D
Corsair Vengeance 16gb DDR4 3200mhz
ASUS B550m-a
RM750e
Samsung 870 EVO 1TB
Dark Rock 4
Corsair iCUE 220T

 

[KingLoki]

If you can clean it carefully and re-apply a skim of paste approx every 2-3 years with heavy use it is fine. I have a another system that hasn't been replaced in approx 6-7 years.

 

[Moonstick2]

Only replace it if you've got real problems that you're pretty sure are down to the paste.

So many people end up causing more problems than they started with, replacing the paste for no other reason than it was 'old' so it seemed like a good thing to do. Temperatures sky-rocket after applying because of some error, or some component gets broken. To be clear, it's not a question of competence. However good somebody is, they're not going to get any meaningful improvement replacing old yet decent paste, but they always run the risk of something unforeseen damaging the card.

I ran an R9 290 (which was a hot card as standard) for over eight years and it never missed a beat.