Why does nobody talk about thermal paste drying out on power supply components

I was fixing a 10 year old TV last week and noticed the PSU had crusty thermal paste on the main mosfets... runs way cooler after I cleaned and reapplied it. Does anyone else bother checking this, or am I just being too picky about stuff that'll fail anyway?

2 comments

2 Comments

bettys5122d ago

Alicesingh is right, but I'd still swap that crusty paste for peace of mind.

alicesingh22d ago

Hang on, I gotta disagree here. Thermal paste on PSU components is usually there for a reason, but nine times out of ten it's not the main cause of failure. Those MOSFETs are built to handle way more heat than a little crusted paste is going to cause, especially in a TV that's already past its expected life. If the paste is dried out but the contact is still solid, you're probably not gaining much by messing with it. Plus, you risk cracking a solder joint or shorting something out when you poke around in there, which is way more likely to kill the unit than the paste drying out. Seems like a lot of effort for maybe a 5% improvement on a part that was already on borrowed time anyway.