thermal paste, less is more....high temps.

jotto

jotto

jotto

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10 Dec 2012
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Is spreading thermal paste the way to go or is it now small pea amount and seat cooler?

Ive always spread before but with my new cooler, the paste didnt seem to spread too well and when I had finished, the CPU looked almost as clean as when I had started and the paste was rising up the spreader and not adhering to the CPU!
Booted PC and ran prime and temps were high within a few seconds so I know I need to reseat the fan and probably apply more paste BUT how much and how.

Pea sized and the allow CPU to spread, pea sized and spread, lines, crosses...pretty patterns???? lol.

Decided to try the Matterhorn Pure and the Gelid GC Extreme paste. Wondering whether to just use the paste supplied.
TIA.
 
Pea sized blob in the middle & careful seating of the cooler is foolproof.

There are more complex ways specific to particular hardware, which may perform slightly better, but after extensive testing of my own the good old pea sized blob does a grand job
 
RetrogamerX said:
Everyone says pea sized, but a pea size is way too big. Everyone should say Grain sized blob.

Just saying;):D
Click to expand...

This.

If you can, when you seat the cooler and apply pressure, give a slight twist. I vaguely remember watching a video this dude did where he used a clear piece of glass (to simulate the heatsink surface) to spread paste on a cpu, and grain sized blob and twisting seemed to provide the best bubble-free result IIRC
 
2 mins to remove cooler, a little splodge (technical term for grain to very small pea size ) reseat cooler using firm pressure and twist. Secured cooler and booted up. Now running prime std @ 59 degrees and IBT at 65 degrees. Thats a 30 degree drop and I havent started playing with fan speeds yet. :)
 
dont you spread it with your finger? i pref that way and smear it so it just covers/makes the heatsink underneath disapear,the thinner the better

each to there own though
 
When it was just a processor die, a blob the size of a cooked grain of long grain rice spread out over the die was right. Now with heatspreaders on the die, possibly two or even three grains depending on consistency, but I always spread it out with a piece of credit card.
 
I never spread it. But do agree it might take 3 grains worth depending on how flat everything is.
Direct contact pipe coolers sometimes need a filler job done to fill in pores and gaps between pipes and sink. For that I will use a credit card to spread and scrape off all excess. The use 2 grain blob.
 
The spreading method is very prone to air bubbles, which is really the opposite of what you want. Glad to see you're getting results from the press and twist.

The exception being direct contact heatpipe coolers that aren't quite flush.
 
doyll said:
I never spread it. But do agree it might take 3 grains worth depending on how flat everything is.
Direct contact pipe coolers sometimes need a filler job done to fill in pores and gaps between pipes and sink. For that I will use a credit card to spread and scrape off all excess. The use 2 grain blob.
Click to expand...

That's exactly the way I do it. When cooler is flat I use grain size, but when pipes need filling I spread then wipe off excess and use grain.

This is the best way.

Nice one doyll:D
 
I used to spread as it looked nicer but the tiny blob method forces the thermal compound out to the edges filling all the space. If you lap the heatsink and cpu you'll need even less thermal compound and will help your temps.

MW
 
Sometimes lapping heatsink doesn't help and can even raise temp. All depends on how flat CPU is.

Heat generally originates in center area of CPU so that's where the best contact is needed. If CPU is slightly cupped (concave) than lapping convex heatsink creates a void in middle of CPU.
 
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