How long does a thermal paste/grease last for Intel P3 CPUs?

Hi. I am wondering. How long does one thermal paste/grease last for a
Pentium III 600 Mhz CPU (Katami/Slot 1)? I noticed that a year ago I
had to clean the CPU's old grease/paste and put a new supply. After a
year, my computer started crashing when in stress (e.g., compiling and
getting too hot; 106 degrees(F)).

I do a lot of compiling on this machine. My room can get very hot during
summer times (85 degrees(F)). I didn't have this problem until a few days
ago, and in the past few months, it has been very hot so it didn't just
get hotter. Even during cooler hours (at night), my computer will still
crash due to enornmous stress and heat it produces. I am wondering if
thermal paste/grease is supposed to last years.

Thank you in advance.
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First understand why thermal compound works better than
thermal pad and tapes. With every transition of media (CPU to
pad to heatsink), then thermal resistance increases. The most
conductive interface is CPU directly to heatsink. That is
what thermal compound does. Most of the CPU connects directly
to heatsink if thermal compound is properly applied. Thermal
compound is applied so minimally so that even the microscopic
holes will conduct some heat.

A perfectly good thermal interface is CPU direct to heatsink
- without compound. Adding thermal compound to that
combination makes the microscopic holes also heat conductors -
and will reduce CPU temperature by less than 10 degrees. Look
at the numbers. Thermal compound is only to also make
microscopic holed thermally conductive AND to not get between
a direct CPU to heatsink connection.

Thermal compound does not go bad in your CPUs lifetime. But
too many humans want to 'fix' things. Sounds like you did
some good fixing. It is common for humans to apply too much
thermal compound - making CPU hotter than if no compound was
applied. For some reason, humans think thermal compound is
essential - and more is better.

Running a computer in an 85 degree F room is not hot. Your
computer must work fine even in a 100 degree F room - without
failure. In fact that is the preferred normal testing
temperature - a task called burn-in testing. Any computer
that does not work in 100 degree F room is defective AND will
probably be failing in near future at 70 degrees.

Your computer is not doing anything more stressful.
Computers run about as hard whether you run a little program
or a monster one. Computer runs instructions at same pace no
matter what program is running. Intel makes special programs
that execute only special instructions to stress chips. You
don't have it. These execute series of 'hotter' instructions
that regular programs don't do when executing complex tasks.
Your computer runs just as 'stressful' when doing everything
else.

Also Intel CPUs don't crash due to heat. They have internal
protection that simply slows the CPU down. Crashing would be
from different reasons.

In short, you have no idea how stressful your software is.
Compiling is a simple task as are most every other program.
But you do know that the original thermal compound was removed
uselessly. Some people foolishly want to clean everything.

Until manufacturer's diagnostics are executed in a 100
degree F room, then no reasons is known for hardware is
crashing. Too much speculation and too few facts. I don't
see any reports from system (event) logs nor voltage
measurements using a 3.5 digit multimeter. Again, even basic
information was not collected before speculating.

ANTant DeleteThis @zimage.com wrote:
 > Hi. I am wondering. How long does one thermal paste/grease last for a
 > Pentium III 600 Mhz CPU (Katami/Slot 1)? I noticed that a year ago I
 > had to clean the CPU's old grease/paste and put a new supply. After a
 > year, my computer started crashing when in stress (e.g., compiling and
 > getting too hot; 106 degrees(F)).
 >
 > I do a lot of compiling on this machine. My room can get very hot during
 > summer times (85 degrees(F)). I didn't have this problem until a few days
 > ago, and in the past few months, it has been very hot so it didn't just
 > get hotter. Even during cooler hours (at night), my computer will still
 > crash due to enornmous stress and heat it produces. I am wondering if
 > thermal paste/grease is supposed to last years.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->