Ya know the odd thing about these drying up stories is I've scavanged many many things over the years, including old stereos and etc electronics with tiny heatsinks which got too hot to touch, hotter than any of our heatsinks get. Though I recognize the contact area gets hotter than the rest of the sink, if the board says 45C, the sink is 35C, even on one die sensor may say 60C, the contact area isn't going to be higher than those.
Anyway, getting back to the thought, I very rarely see the heatsink compound (usually similar in consistency and appearance to the radio shack variety) dried up on these things, many of which are twenty or more years old. Then again it's usually globbed on thicker than we do. Just seems strange, we're not dealing with terribly extreme temps, pretty good pressures though and thin applications, but since the first accounts of dried paste have turned up, there have been stories of people having "problems" with their stuff drying out all the way back to 486's.
I'm still not convinced dried out paste is a problem until the mating surfaces shift. But I may find out. Just out of curiousity I put on RS paste and the temps were exactly the same. Relapped the HS to get the layer of ASII supposably impregnated in it out so that was a virgin surface, core just got cleaned. I didn't measure ambient temp though so it may well have been a bit cooler, either way there wasn't a 5 deg shift in CPU temp and there sure wasn't that much shift in ambient..AC's been set the same for a month. So I'll leave it, watch it now and then and when temps go up or I get bored waiting I'll check and see if it's dried out.
Just too much voodoo around the whole paste issue for my taste. Now we've got people worried about AS drying out when it's never been at issue.
Disclaimers:
Mike - yes measured with the board's sensor, not an on die one. I respect you trying to make sure everything's measured fairly though.
Nevin - ASII works nice, it'll go back on next time I'm in the box because it is a good product.
Everyone else - Good morning!
Edit: Typo