Computer Thermal Paste - Back to Home
In my years of collecting old computers, one thing I've never done is invest the time to replace the old thermal paste on all my PCs. Since many of my computers are well over 20 years old, most of the old thermal paste has completely dried up & disintegrated. It was never my top priority, since I rarely use them for anything important enough that good thermals would matter, but since I had some free time on my hands this week, I finally fixed up almost every computer I have.
Since replacing thermal paste isn't the most interesting webpage topic, most of this page is me ranting about case design & CPU coolers. Most CPU coolers have these 2 metal clips that attach to the CPU socket, and it's the most irritating locking mechanism ever invented. It's almost impossible to get both clips attached in under 5 minutes. Chances are, you'll end up accidentally smearing the fresh thermal paste while you're messing with the heatsink.
The far better CPU coolers are the ones that just screw on, like this one from the Cisco Wave PC. No stupid retention clips & locking mechanism, it just screws directly into the case.
This is from the Presario SR5152NX, which is another PC with a terrible CPU heatsink design. I may have actually repasted the Presario at some point in the distant past, since it was the only PC where the old thermal paste wasn't completely dry dust.
There was only 1 computer that I completely gave up on even attempting to work on: the Compaq Prosignia. I've always known that the case of the Prosignia is terrible, but I had never attempted to access the CPU until now. The power supply blocks the CPU, so I had to remove it. When I did that, I found an ungodly amount of dust on the back of the PSU.
Turns out, this machine has no CPU fan. Rather, the PSU has a plastic shield & vent that goes over the CPU heatsink, and the PSU exhaust fan effectively also acts as the CPU fan. I had never taken the PSU out before, so I had no idea it worked like that. Regardless, I ended up abandoning the thermal paste replacement, because there's absolutely no way I could get that CPU cooler off & on without completely dissecting the PC. At some point, I would like to invest the time into completely gutting the Prosignia for a proper cleaning, but not any time soon.
So, for now, that's the end of my adventure. My goal this November is to find older & more unique computers, which I think I'll be able to do.