Reuse TIM?

[Jakalwarrior]

Realistically speaking? is there any reason not to reuse arctic silver? other than being a good consumer and buying more?

[SparkyJJO]

I don't know how best you'd recapture the paste, I suppose you could but I find it easier to just drop a new dollop on.

[Hard H20]

I would not recommend reusing AS5 or any other TIM for the matter. The thermal cycles set the paste, once you remove the HSF from the chip, I'm sure this will effect the thermal performance of the paste. I'm no expert but it would make me feel cheap and dirty reusing TIM. ;)

[Jakalwarrior]

I don't know how best you'd recapture the paste, I suppose you could but I find it easier to just drop a new dollop on.

For me a lot of times im migrating chip + HSF to a new board. The AS5 is usually all gooey and on both parts. Always hurts me to whipe it all off, apply more, and stick em back together. Also, tommorow ill be putting a new heatsink on my computer, and giving my old one to my wife. If my XP90c has a good spread on it, im going to be very tempted to just clean her CPU and plop it down. If its thin I might spread it around and see if I can get total coverage. Same on my side. Gonna be temped to use whats left on the CPU and slap the new cooler on it (again, only if it has good coverage). Seems like a way to slowly get thinner applications over time :D