Original Xbox thermal paste. Was it a bad idea to replace the thermal paste?

Got around to working on an old original Xbox. After doing a soft mod on it the temps were running a little high so I figure I'd put in some new thermal paste. I decided to use some arctic silver 5. I was getting temps in the 60 Celsius range and started with the CPU and then GPU. Now my temps are even higher sometimes reaching 68 - 72 Celsius when idle on the dash. I tested two spread methods to spread the paste the first was spreading the paste with a card and them the rice grain method. Still getting some rather high temps. Any suggestions on to do next would be great. Perhaps I should of used some thermal pads instead?

 

Or ya know just place a dot in the center and call it a day but sure whatever......
As for the temps being higher well not sure but could be an issue elsewhere like the heat sync not being on right or something.

 

+1 for probable user error. The stock paste is the usual barely-good-enough-to sell quality, pretty much any brand product will be better. Application method shouldn't matter, because at the factory they also just throw a glob on there prettty much willy-nilly and move to on the next unit, no time to waste.

You sure you didn't accidentally leave the card inbetween CPU and heatsink, and didn't use actual rice?

 

You probably need to reapply it, a loose fit can cause temps comparable to no heat sink at all. Did you scrape off all the old paste/gunk first? I remember that being a pain to remove.

I have AS in both of my original Xboxes (and 360 come to think of it) and temps are nice and cool, significantly lower than stock.

 

I don't know what is going on here. My pastes spreading methods I used are fine. Cleaned the surface area of the CPU, GPU and heat sinks each time I re-applied paste. I'm not getting anywhere with this. Motherboard is a 1.6 model if that means anything.

 

I use mx-4 paste I get around 40c to 50c

 

But be sure all the heatsinks are fully cleaned.

 

How where you cleaning off the old paste? Also, having too much thermal paste can actually cause this as well. The paste should be spread extremely thin, it should take a few minutes to actually spread it across the CPU/GPU.

 

I like to clean everything with 91% isopropyl alcohol. What ever junk they used was stuck on there good but it was all cleaned off real good before my first application of AS5. I since moved from Unleash X to XBMC and that has given me a separate / better readings for CPU and GPU. 101 F on CPU and 76 F on the GPU
roughly 39 C on CPU and 25 C on GPU.

 

Those are very nice temps. Sounds like you've got it

 

I remove the old paste using Tim clean, I use dot method works perfect every time.