A custom-built gaming PC came in from near Finlathen Park, booked in because it was overheating. Nice build, too. There's an AMD Ryzen 5 4500 in it, an ASUS GeForce GTX 1650 Super doing the graphics and a Gigabyte motherboard, all sitting in a white Montech case. The customer also wanted a BIOS update while it was with us. Easy enough.
Overheating can come from a few places, so we didn't start taking things apart straight away. We ran all the tests first. Only one thing stood out, and that was the graphics card. FurMark is a stress test that works a card far harder than most games ever will, and just over a minute into it the chip was at 76°C. Its hotspot, the hottest single point on the chip, was reading 90°C. That's high. The fan was already running at 59% trying to keep up.
That sent us straight to the cooler on the card. With the heatsink lifted off, the cause was plain to see. The thermal paste on the chip had gone dry and crusty, and there was dust and fluff stuck along one side of the board as well. Paste is only there to fill the tiny gaps between the chip and the copper plate on the cooler, so heat can move across, and once it dries out like that, it can't do its job. The card just runs hotter.
We cleaned the old stuff off, put fresh paste on and refitted the cooler. Then back on FurMark it went. This time the chip sat at 69°C with the hotspot at 83°C, and the fan only needed 49% to hold it there. That's seven degrees off both readings with the fan working less hard, so it's quieter as well as cooler.
While it was on the bench we did the BIOS update too. Gigabyte boards have their own tool for this called Q-Flash, and the screen showed the update had finished before the PC restarted itself. Last of all it went through our checks one more time. It passed every one.
We booked it in just before ten in the morning, it was ready just after half two, and the customer picked it up that afternoon. No parts needed, just our desktop service.
Most folk never think about thermal paste, and that's fair enough. It lasts for years. But if your gaming PC is running hotter or louder than it used to, dried-out paste and dust are two of the first things we'd check. It's a lot cheaper than a new graphics card. Drop it in and we'll take a look.
Need the same repair? See our full Desktop Computer Repair Dundee | Repair Alliance service for pricing and what's covered.
