F5F Stay Refreshed Hardware Desktop Successful thermal PAD upgrade for Old XPS Story of improved performance and efficiency

Successful thermal PAD upgrade for Old XPS Story of improved performance and efficiency

Successful thermal PAD upgrade for Old XPS Story of improved performance and efficiency

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DarkMarc2001
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08-02-2017, 11:48 PM
#1
I own an older Dell XPS desktop from 2017 equipped with a 1080/Intel i7 8700 (not K). Over time, storage and RAM upgrades have made it still function well but often became excessively noisy and hot. I realized the stock cooler might have degraded, possibly burning out the thermal paste. After a 15-year hiatus from building custom setups, I’m comfortable with the process again. I swapped the original factory thermal paste for a phase-change pad (thermal grizzly). During a 10-minute multicore Cinibench R23 test, my thermal throttling dropped from around 70% to just 2%, based on hwinfo (83°C average). This likely means the system only throttles at the beginning, probably because the new pad changed things. While this improvement isn’t dramatic, it helped my score by about 5% (from ~6950 to 7290). I’m glad my office is now cooler—no longer needing a window open in winter or running a fan indoors in spring. I’m also confident this extends the life of this aging machine.
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DarkMarc2001
08-02-2017, 11:48 PM #1

I own an older Dell XPS desktop from 2017 equipped with a 1080/Intel i7 8700 (not K). Over time, storage and RAM upgrades have made it still function well but often became excessively noisy and hot. I realized the stock cooler might have degraded, possibly burning out the thermal paste. After a 15-year hiatus from building custom setups, I’m comfortable with the process again. I swapped the original factory thermal paste for a phase-change pad (thermal grizzly). During a 10-minute multicore Cinibench R23 test, my thermal throttling dropped from around 70% to just 2%, based on hwinfo (83°C average). This likely means the system only throttles at the beginning, probably because the new pad changed things. While this improvement isn’t dramatic, it helped my score by about 5% (from ~6950 to 7290). I’m glad my office is now cooler—no longer needing a window open in winter or running a fan indoors in spring. I’m also confident this extends the life of this aging machine.

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