Can I reuse thermal paste?

[IcePea379]

Ok so, I plan to clean my PC, and if I remove the heatsink, I should remove the thermal paste and put a new one for preventing thermal-throtheling. But, if I use something like plastic, and I push all the thermal paste from CPU in the center, I will reconstruct a ”rice”, then do the same thing with the heatsink. And when mounting the heatsink back again, the paste will spread evenly on the surface, as a new apllyed thermal paste, and i will prevent air pockets and thermal throtheling. Is my solution practical an viable? Or this won't work. Sry for my english. =)

[Semper]

It's not considered a reusable item.

It's best to replace it every time you remove your heatsink.

[Stahlmann]

If it has been a while since you first installed the heatsink, you should replace it with new paste. This will increase the time before you have to change out your thermal paste again.

 

But for example when you just mounted the cooler and have to take it right back off, don't bother changing the paste. Just remount the cooler.

[siewcu]

Nope, you can't. I've tried recently - because I was too lazy and I knew that there will be no heavy load on this setup. Effect - more heat on cpu. Even cheap paste, but fresh, will be much better than old one...

[SAmsonIsThaBest]

On my laptop when I cleaned it I removed the heatpipes, that are connected to both the cpu and the gpu. Did not change the paste. One week later I had to open it up again because the thermals were so bad.