Thermal Paste: Best application method?

[doobyscoo]

I am about to build my first gaming PC. I now have all the components. I have watched some guides on thermal paste application, but people seem to do it differently: some do a single dab (or multiple ones) and let the cooler do the rest, other‘s evenly spread the paste. Is one method preferable to the other, or does it make little difference? I have a 7800X3D and I will be using Noctua’s NT-H2 paste under a NH-U12A cooler. Any advice would be gratefully received

 

[doobyscoo]

Thank you so much for the comprehrensive answer. Extremely helpful indeed. As per your suggestion, I shall follow the instructions included with the paste. I watched a Noctua video guide of how to secure the NH-U12A on an AM5 CPU. The method they used was a dot of paste in the middle and four at the corners before attaching the cooler. I shall see if their paste advises the same method. Thanks once again for your advice

 

[doobyscoo]

Nothing to do with thermal paste, but I hit a roadblock with the cooler fans. I removed them to install the cooler, and now, for the life of me, I can’t reattach them. I feel like an idiot. I had to cover everything up and leave it for today because I could feel my blood beginning to boil. When I feel like that, I know it’s time to step away.

Go by the instructions if there are any, but as long as you use an appropriate amount any method should be as good as the next.

There was a video somewhere which had a clear plastic over the pasted heatsink which gave the opportunity to see that the pressure spread the paste nicely regardless of whether the paste was in an X, line or dot.

So big two things for me are: have I put thermal paste in, have I take the plastic film off. If yes should be all good.

Thanks for the advice. Hmmm… I‘m worried now that I didn’t remove some plastic film. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any on the cooler. I really hope there wasn’t. Lol. It‘s a Noctua cooler. It had a bulky plastic guard over the plate.

pea sized blob or a long grain of rice down the middle

I went with the pea option

 

[doobyscoo]

Thanks for all the replies. Much appreciated! In the end, I went for the pea. I finally closed up the case this morning. Had a couple of scares. At one point, I thought I might have damaged my GPU when I inserted it. Luckily, it wasn’t the case.

I’m currently idling at 25c, so I must have got the thermal paste right, thankfully. After stress testing, I’m going to take a long, hard look at my fan curves. The Phanteks intake fans are too noisy. They’ve started to give me the hump.

 

[doobyscoo]

The advice is usually the method which the end user will least likely screw up - not necessarily the optimal method if you know what you are doing. Problem is for that you really need to know what is going on underneath the IHS and the properties of the paste.

Given my inexperience, I’m glad I took the path of least resistance. It seems to have worked out OK