Having moved from a 10 year old intel I5 with next to zero gaming, thermals have never been much of a worry for me but now I’ve moved to AMD and really pushing my computer with gaming and video editing I’ve been paying closer attention to my CPU temperature which is very easy for me to do at a glance as the RGB in my case changes with the temperature of the CPU and also the aggressive fan curves which keeps everything quiet under 50C but can be quite noisy when over 60C and after my last BIOS update (Ver 1.60) the temperature has been worrying me.
I know the temperatures are not overly high for AMD processors which are designed to withstand and operate at temperatures hotter than the Intel chips I’m used to and I’m probably just noticing more because I had to redo these fan curves after the last BIOS and I was used to the noises the previous curves gave me coupled with the fact the ambient temperature is hotter being summer but I’m not the sort to just leave it at that.
Time For New Thermal Paste?
Having built the machine about 6 months ago there should really be no need to change the thermal paste on the CPU however, the paste used in the initial build was included in with my MSI CoreLiquid 240 AIO and I’ve no clue how good it is so after a little research I grabbed a pack of Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut from Amazon which has great reviews and seems simple to apply, as I’m not confident enough to use any of the electrically conductive alternatives.
As a base line I opened HW Monitor reset the min/max and ran 3D Bench (because it’s already installed) and my CPU temperature hitting a max of 76.6C I then removed my AIO, cleaned all the old paste off with iso-propyl alcohol and a lint free cloth and applied the new Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut liberally, and let’s face there’s not enough to do more than one CPU so there’s no point being stingy! I used the spatula method, which I’ve never done before but as the spatula is included and it ensures a good even coverage why not?! I also got out the Xpower Air Duster and gave the insides a quick blast while it was open, there wasn’t much dust at all so I doubt that made much difference to my test numbers. Once everything was put back together I ran the same test as before with 3D Bench. The CPU only hit a max of 69.4C in this test and while not a particularly scientific or controlled test I’m pretty happy with that reduction in temperature.
Since changing the paste the machine is certainly running cooler while working and gaming, so I guess that’s a few quid well spent, and I suppose a lesson learned in that maybe the included paste with a cooler is possibly not the best on the market!