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Skeptical about thermal paste on budget laptops turned out I was wrong
Used to think that cheap thermal paste was fine for my old Dell Inspiron. After three months the CPU temps were hitting 95C under load and I finally swapped it with a $7 tube of Arctic MX-4. That dropped temps by 12 degrees easy. Anyone else see a big difference with name brand paste?
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ben4368d ago
Had a buddy swear his cheap paste was fine until his Acer caught fire during a Zoom call. Swapped to Noctua and it ran cool as a cucumber after that.
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ben436 your buddy got lucky that Acer didn't actually catch fire, cheap paste can definitely make things worse but usually it just cooks the CPU slowly. Arctic MX-4 is a solid budget pick, I saw similar drops on my old HP Pavilion going from the stock goop to that. Dropped idle temps by like 8 degrees and load temps by 10-12 on a hot summer day. Name brand paste is worth the few extra bucks for sure.
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