I had an old gaming PC that was originally built back in 2011 that I have not used for a while. I recently decided to rebuild it adding an SSD and move it into a newer case. It's an Asrock Xtreme9 motherboard with a Sandybridge i7 3930K CPU.
This thing is still a beast ten years later.
As you can see, the newer case (which I was given for free) is huge. That's a full ATX motherboard and look at all the space...
I ordered some thermal paste in preparation since this thing was built back in 2011.
When I arrived home from work this evening my thermal paste was lying just inside the door on the rug. I excitedly got to work right away disconnecting wires, removing panels and finally removing the heatsink. I cleaned everything up and slapped some paste onto the 3930k cpu...
Next up was the heatsink pad. Gave it a thourough clean and applied a thin layer of paste
Very carefully I refitted the heatsink
Once I was happy with everything I refitted the fans to the cooler and was ready to fire the PC back up.
You have probably spotted a Raspberry Pi 2 mounted on the inside top of the case. This is a side project I have going where I'm powering the Pi from a spare 5v rail on the PSU.... More on that in another post.