I have my amd wraith cooler ready to install on a B450 carbon pro board. It has come with what I assume is pre applied thermal paste (sticky and white/grey.) Two questions A) is it advisable or desirable to apply further thermal paste on the CPU and B) unaware it would have it pre applied I've touched it accidentally when taking the packaging off and left a thumb print just of centre, is this an issue?
If your going to apply paste to the CPU then you would want to clean it off the cooler. I just went with the stock paste on mine but if you have some kryonaut laying about then this would probably drop temps by a few degrees.
I doubt the thumb print would make much difference as the paste will even out when warm.
I've got artic silver 5 that I was planning to use but being new to this game I'm tempted to leave the stock paste on. Would there be any noticeable difference between stock and aftermarket unless your pushing the performance envelope?
As for the thumb print lol?
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I'd leave the stock paste on. Any difference wouldn't be worth worrying about. The thumb print won't be an issue either. Once you install the cooler and tighten it up it will be gone.
Well it's on, with some difficulty I might add. On inspection i can see some thermal paste has squeezed out on the heatsink surface of the cooler, likely due to the accidental twisting movement. There was a bit of fiddling, pressure and movement in trying to get the clips on each side fastened so I'm a bit concerned i've got this wrong :/. When my first attempt didn't work I disengaged it and some paste remained that I had to clean of the side of the CPU as well
Is it worth continuing at this point or am I being too paranoid?
Is it worth continuing at this point or am I being too paranoid?
Is it the prism?
Yeah came with the 2700x
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I'd carry on, it's easy to get caught up in small details like some paste on the cooler. As long as you haven't got some on the motherboard it'll be fine. It is a difficult part of the process thought as unless you've done one before you're not entirely sure it's on correctly.
It does take some force to lock those clips down, I had my bro hold it steady while I locked it down and even then it was a struggle, atleast u know it's not going to fall off!
With just two hands I found it impossible for it too not twist, I had it on and off as well which is what's most freaking out as it felt like too much force