Hey everyone! I've got a PC that's about 4 years old with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 240. Lately, my CPU has been heating up a lot, hitting around 95°C under load, which made me realize it was time to replace the thermal paste. I applied a pea-sized dot of the paste and cleaned out the dust. However, now it seems worse! The CPU temperature keeps climbing even at idle, and I had to shut it down before it hit 93°C. I'm not very skilled with hardware, so I might have put too little paste on. Is it normal for cooling issues like this to come up after reapplying paste, or could it mean the cooler is on its last legs? The fans are spinning, and I can see them in the BIOS, but the radiator and pipes aren't warming up at all while the CPU temperature rises dangerously high. Should I look into replacing the cooler, or did I just mess up the thermal paste application?
2 Answers
First things first, check your AIO cooler. Take it out and hold the water pump to your ear while shaking it. If you hear sloshing, it might not have enough liquid to work properly. That could be a huge reason your cooling is failing!
Make sure your AIO is plugged into the correct headers. The pump and fans should be spinning, and you should feel vibrations in the pump. Also, check the BIOS settings to ensure it’s in PWM mode and that the fan curve is set to ramp up with CPU temperature. As for the thermal paste, try using a high-quality paste and spread a thin layer evenly on the CPU. The pea-sized dot method doesn’t always do the trick. When you install the AIO, tighten it down in an X pattern instead of just cranking one screw at a time. And definitely clean off any old paste first with rubbing alcohol! Arctic Liquid Freezer II is a solid cooler and shouldn’t fail so soon, but it has at least a 5-year warranty if it does!
I used some MX-5 paste, and I thought I followed the X pattern properly. Do you think it’s possible that incorrect application could lead to no cooling at all? I get that performance could drop, but not like this. And yes, I confirmed that it sloshes when I shake it.
Yeah, unfortunately, it does slosh. Are there any steps to fix this, or is it pretty much a replacement situation?