Quick question. I was digging out the boxes and such from my last build 5 years ago and found the tube of Arctic Silver 5 that I used back then. Would that stuff still be good to use when my new parts get here, or is there some sort of expiration?
If you ordered a new heatsink youll get new paste, and if you ordered a new CPU youll get the stock heatsink with pre-applied paste. Unless neither of that occurs then i'd still try the paste out. Its likely the top of the tube has dried out, so just get rid of that then you should be fine.