TIL thermal paste curing times are actually a real thing after a client call me out

About 3 months ago I built a gaming PC for a guy in Denver using some premium thermal paste. He called me last week saying his CPU temps were climbing higher than they were on day one. I went back to check and remembered that some pastes need a "break in" period of 50 to 100 hours to hit peak performance. So my question is: do you all account for this curing time in your builds or do you just go with what the temps show right after install? Is there a reliable way to tell if your paste needs that time or if you just didn't apply it right?

2 comments

2 Comments

charles_henderson20d ago

Yeah I just let it run for a day or two and check again later, usually levels out fine for me.

rowan_thomas12d ago

Honestly I read somewhere that leaving it running that long actually does more harm than good for some setups. Something about the algorithm getting confused by the constant static data. I tried the "wait it out" method once and it took almost three weeks before things even started looking normal again. By that point I had already wasted a ton of time and missed some important deadlines. I think a lot of people just get lucky and assume that means it works for everyone, but it really depends on what kind of data you're feeding into it.