Thermal Paste

[Gandeh]

Just had a few questions about this as I'm not all that experienced with it.

If I ever need to remove Thermal Paste that I've applied, does it come off of a CPU easily? Or does it become harder than it's first pasty state?

Is more less? Do I want to lather paste on or just put a nice fine spreading?

I bought a 1100T Phenom recently and just applied the stock thermal paste that came with it. Is this the best thing to do or is there special paste you can buy?

 

[Adsta]

I use TIM cleaner Always does the job. Use some lint free cloth and paste will come off easy

There are better thermal pastes around that can sometimes knock a couple of degrees off such as IC Diamond but will cost you a few pennies more.

 

[R5GTT]

Depends on the paste as to how well it comes off. Some stuff stays greasy but other stuff can dry slightly and crumble. If it's metallic you need to be careful little pieces don't crumble and fall onto any components or around the cpu socket.
Best thing to do is buy some alcohol or TIM remover which is usually a citrus smelling solvent.

With regards to the amount you want a nice thin layer. There are a few techniques to applying paste. Personally I have always gone for applying a small blob to the centre of the heat spreader (slightly bigger than a grain of rice) and then allowing it to spread with the pressure of the heatsink and find it's own level. Some people choose to spread it as a thin layer over the whole heat spreader using a plastic bag on the end of your finger or something.

Special pastes like MX-4 / arctic silver / ic diamond etc will usually always give you about 2-5 degrees lower temperatures than stock material from my experience and a tube will last you a little while so well worth it IMHO.

 

[Gashman]

you want a nice thin layer of paste, plus like said above there are better thermal pastes, some can make a nice difference in temperature, the one I use for example Liquid Metal Pro is horrible to work with but it shaved a decent amount off temperature over stock paste. so it can pay off to use better thermal material, since you are new to this sort of thing would recommend not using Liquid Metal Pro cause its weird to use, never used that IC Diamond stuff but read good things about it.

 

[Gandeh]

Okay thanks folks

 

[Lithium]

I used the tube of stuff that came with my Noctua cooler.

This stuff does go a long long way, your average sized tube will probably seat 20 CPU's.

The problem is that most people don't go through 20 CPU's within 2-3 years and most of the thermal compounds I've used do go off after a couple of years.

The MX-4 for example came out the tube after 18 months in two seperate fluids, one grey and one slightly yellow like oil, once it's seperated like that you are best off throwing it away.