Am I lucky or eventually screwed?

asdf.

New Member
Yesterday I bought a new power supply,and in order to install it,I had to remove my huge heatsink. I hate dust so I cleaned it up...I then saw the CPU and noticed a patch of grey stuff...I thought it was dust so i swiftly cleaned it with paper towel, put on the heatsink, and put everything back together

...

Oblivious to what I just did, I turned on my computer and used it for about 2 hours. I had a small hint in my head that cleaning that dust was tougher than usual so I curiously googled grey subtance chip and found out what I just did.

Tomorrow I'm getting my computer serviced to get the paste reapplied, but I'm curious as to if lucky that my CPU lasted 2 hours, or if my CPU is doomed to fail now...
 

diduknowthat

formerly liuliuboy
Well the CPU probably ran at a high temperature seeing that you cleaned off the thermal paste. If it didn't do any then it should be fine. What did you do with the computer for 2 hours, probably nothing too intensive if it didn't lock up.
 

sniperchang

New Member
If the CPU starts overheating, usually there's some sort of fail safe that shuts down the computer. Your CPU may have gotten hot, but you would have noticed glitches, artifacts or crashes as it overheats and eventually shuts down. Since you didn't say anything about that, you appear to be lucky
 
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