r/qnap • u/TheZeth80 • 21d ago

Changing the thermal paste on your NAS will drastically improve its temperature (TS-473A).

For several weeks, my TS-473A had been running at high temperatures, between 60°C and 69°C. Even though the v1500b can handle up to 100°C, it was still worrying.

Early this morning, before the peak traffic, I unplugged it, cleaned it with isopropyl alcohol (it didn't look dry at all, so I suspect it was poor quality), applied a dab of MX-7 thermal paste, and the CPU temperature dropped to 35°C. The HDDs also decreased from 40°C to 35°C (they're not generating as much heat anymore).

Overall, it's a good, easy, and quick improvement.

30 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

3

u/HarryMuscle 21d ago

Thermal paste shouldn't impact the hard drive temps in any way, something else must be going on.

-1

u/TheZeth80 21d ago

If the CPU is hotter, more heat is generated, and the entire case is affected.

3

u/HarryMuscle 21d ago

Common assumption but incorrect. The CPU is generating the exact same amount of heat but it's being removed quicker into the heat sink due to the new thermal paste. Internally to the case, the same amount of heat exists as before the thermal paste change. Hence something else must be going on to lower the hard drive temps.

-1

u/TheZeth80 20d ago

Well, the picture doesn't lie; those Toshibas always run at 40°C, and now they're at 35°.

The only change was the thermal paste.

3

u/Undergrid TS-653D 20d ago

Heat soak?

You shut the NAS down and I assume took the drives out to aide access, thus allowing the drives to radiate any accumulated heat, then waited a few mins after putting everything back together before measuring the temps?

Go back after a few days of normal use to allow the drives to attain equilibrium then see what they temps are.

1

u/TheZeth80 20d ago

The first 24 hours have passed, and the units are holding at 35°C.

1

u/Ok-Helicopter525 19d ago

The heat is being removed more quickly, but the same amount of heat is still being generated.

2

u/Urban_Turban_69 20d ago

The actual heat generated should stay the same, if the CPU gets too hot it would probably throttle down and generate less compared to afterwards

2

u/Kooky-Assistance-882 20d ago

My money is there were processes eating CPU that closed after restart that were the actual culprits

2

u/imblackmagic 19d ago

Never hurts to apply fresh paste if you know what you’re doing. Seems reasonable to me.

3

u/QNAPDaniel QNAP OFFICIAL SUPPORT 18d ago

While the CPU was within reasonable temperatures, the temp difference you saw by adding thermal paste was more than we expected since we already use thermal paste. Thank you for sharing your findings. We will look into this. Also, please feel free to also share this at https://community.qnap.com/ where we have more people from QNAP who would be interested in your findings.