The thermal paste has dried out, but it may still be safe to use again depending on the conditions.
The thermal paste has dried out, but it may still be safe to use again depending on the conditions.
It looks like this item is brand new and hasn’t been used before. The computer didn’t start at all on its first run, which means no overclocking will happen. A nice reminder to keep that in mind!
Oh dear lord... :blink: It seems those long-term effects of the substitute TIMs might be quite bad. Fascinating that ketchup performed so well. Maybe it’s the moisture content that boosted its performance. Over time, that could wear down parts and cause water to leak out. I think tomato paste probably isn’t very effective as a TIM.
I tested the setup with the pre-installed thermal paste and achieved a stable speed of 1.05 Ghz. The new OC caused crashes when opening programs, except for Task Manager. Switching to the fresh white clay-like paste reduced the temperature significantly—now it runs at 3.01 Ghz and handles Roblox well. I increased the BIOS settings and it performed much better. Using dry thermal paste damaged both my E7500 Core 2 Duo and Q8300 Core 2 Quad, so I’m careful now.