T510 Discrete Graphics (NVIDIA) runs fan a lot in Linux

[lparsons]

I've had this T510 for over 7 years now and it's recently been brought back into regular service. I bought a 512GB SSD for it and it has 8GB RAM; it now exclusively runs Kubuntu 19.10LTS.
More to the point though, the fan runs a lot. As in, almost constantly, regardless of what I'm doing. Even if my web browser isn't started and I'm just looking at a terminal window in KDE, the fan is running at nearly maximum. The system doesn't seem to be hot to the touch, but the fan apparently thinks otherwise.
What should I look at for this? I was considering replacing the fan but the CPU fan for this system is not easy to obtain for the discrete graphics models - I've seen a couple on ebay but they take over a month to slow boat to my place from China (I can't find one located in North America that isn't a refurb). Or is there something else I should look at first? I was considering opening up the system and maybe pushing some compressed air through the fan first in case it's just clogged up with dust from being in my basement office (largely unused) for a long time.

[RealBlackStuff]

When was the last time you refreshed the thermal paste?
Probably ages ago...

[lparsons]

When was the last time you refreshed the thermal paste?
Probably ages ago...

Actually, probably never on this system. Great point thank you! What paste is recommended now? I thought at one point it was a thermal pad instead of paste, is that still the case or is that too long ago? Should I expect to scrape old paste off when I get in there?
thank you!

[RealBlackStuff]

Instructions here: http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appmeth ... d_v1.1.pdf

Don't use the above AS5 paste, it's outdated, but the instructions are very good.
There are various good pastes nowadays, such as Phobya Nanogrease Extreme, Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, Noctua NT-H2, Arctic Cooling MX-4, Prolimatech PK-3
Any one of the above will do fine.