and corpuscle's got the right advice. ^^ Personally when i've gotten pre-applied sinks, I find that there's usually far too much paste there, so I remove it and do my own coat.
CPU pre-applied thermal paste - Page 2
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Deleted User 135096
3624 Posts
and corpuscle's got the right advice. ^^ Personally when i've gotten pre-applied sinks, I find that there's usually far too much paste there, so I remove it and do my own coat. | ||
Iranon
United States983 Posts
For reference, my temps are usually around 45 for the cpu, 30 for the mobo, and 70 on the graphics card. | ||
hellokitty[hk]
United States1309 Posts
On December 18 2012 08:42 Iranon wrote: I've been wondering about this too. I built my desktop 5 or 6 years ago, and didn't bother with aftermarket cooling of any kind (CPU is a C2D E6750). I don't think any of my temps have gotten crazy, but do I have to replace the stock thermal paste at any point? Or is it something you apply and then forget about for the life of the machine. For reference, my temps are usually around 45 for the cpu, 30 for the mobo, and 70 on the graphics card. Those temps are fine. If you spend the money (or have some lying around) to replace it with new thermal paste you will probably see temps go down a few degrees but that really does not matter at that temperature. IMO spend your time/money somewhere else because it will not have an actual effect on performance. | ||
Rachnar
France1526 Posts
On December 18 2012 08:42 Iranon wrote: I've been wondering about this too. I built my desktop 5 or 6 years ago, and didn't bother with aftermarket cooling of any kind (CPU is a C2D E6750). I don't think any of my temps have gotten crazy, but do I have to replace the stock thermal paste at any point? Or is it something you apply and then forget about for the life of the machine. For reference, my temps are usually around 45 for the cpu, 30 for the mobo, and 70 on the graphics card. normally once a year i believe, but as said previsouly, its not a necessity i don't have any right now on mine, run's decently cool | ||
Glowinglight
United States76 Posts
On December 18 2012 07:25 corpuscle wrote: The reason you use thermal paste is that no matter how high-quality the contact surfaces of whatever metal components you're attaching are, there's going to be unevenness between them, meaning that the heat exchange isn't optimal. Thermal paste fills in the little crags and gaps between the components so that there's as close to a full contact surface as possible. Because even the best paste generally doesn't conduct as well as whatever metal your components are made of, you want to use as little as possible to completely cover the surface. Put a dab (a pea-sized drop is usually more than enough) on your CPU and spread it out as thinly as possible with a credit card, taking care not to let any spill over the edges. It should be visible but translucent when you're done: if you can't see through it, you used way too much. Do NOT put a bit on and then just smoosh the parts together. You won't get an even application, and you're more likely to run the risk of it spilling out the sides. The key to proper application is a very thin but very even coat that covers the whole CPU. If you do it right, nothing will spill out when you attach the heat sink because there isn't enough there to get smooshed out from between them. Is that correct? I don't plan on building building a PC anytime soon, but I did plan on building one. From what I had gathered I was going to put a pea sized amount on one of the surfaces then press them together to spread it out. I watched this video and it seemed to have the best spread This shows the dot to work well too Like I said I've never put one together so I am not to familiar but it seems like something important to get right. What is everyone elses experience? | ||
KrAKPrODiGY
Canada12 Posts
User was temporarily forum banned for this post. | ||
corpuscle
United States1967 Posts
On December 18 2012 13:51 Glowinglight wrote: Is that correct? I don't plan on building building a PC anytime soon, but I did plan on building one. From what I had gathered I was going to put a pea sized amount on one of the surfaces then press them together to spread it out. I watched this video and it seemed to have the best spread This shows the dot to work well too Like I said I've never put one together so I am not to familiar but it seems like something important to get right. What is everyone elses experience? Doing the dot technique works, but it's really still not ideal for a few reasons. First off, it's really hard to get the exact amount right: as the video shows, making a dot and then smooshing the contacts together gets you a circle, and processors are square, not circular. There's no way to cover the entire surface with paste with that method unless you use too much, and it's hard to get even an ideal circle (which would have the same diameter as the processor's width). If you're leaving some portion of the CPU paste-free, you're not getting as much out of the paste as possible. Second, it's harder to tell if you've used the right amount or not. If you've done it a trillion times and know the exact amount you need, sure, you can probably get it right, but most people apply thermal paste once every five years, so it's not exactly something you're going to get a lot of practice with. You can double-check if you have the right amount by disconnecting the heatsink, but... why? Just spread it out ahead of time. It's really not that hard. I realize that there's a lot of "right" ways to do it, and it's really not something that matters all that much anyway, but from poking around on google, there seems to be a lot of people advocating the "make a dot and smoosh it" method, which is just absurd, because it's clearly less effective and only marginally easier. Three of the product manuals I have that talk about applying thermal paste tell you to spread it out thinly and evenly with a credit card, but the internet seems to disagree... | ||
Alryk
United States2718 Posts
On December 18 2012 14:23 KrAKPrODiGY wrote: Basically, anyway works as long as the Silicone is gushing out of the sides! Most of the time preapplied paste is not enough, so as mentioned above, its better to remove and reapply. The way to remove it is with rubbing alcohol and apply a new fresh paste. Hope it helps! Haven't they established that this is a terrible idea? I'm probably just falling victim to a troll, poor me. | ||
Rannasha
Netherlands2398 Posts
On December 18 2012 14:54 corpuscle wrote: Doing the dot technique works, but it's really still not ideal for a few reasons. First off, it's really hard to get the exact amount right: as the video shows, making a dot and then smooshing the contacts together gets you a circle, and processors are square, not circular. There's no way to cover the entire surface with paste with that method unless you use too much, and it's hard to get even an ideal circle (which would have the same diameter as the processor's width). If you're leaving some portion of the CPU paste-free, you're not getting as much out of the paste as possible. You don't really need to cover the entire heatspreader. The actual CPU only takes up a fairly small (15%-20%) of the surface of the entire thing and it's located directly in the middle. While the heatspreader does spread out the heat somewhat over the entire area, the majority of the heat is still transferred via the central area, so optimal spread over thermal paste in that area is far more important than in the edge regions. Which is exactly what you achieve with the rice-grain-technique. | ||
hollytech0103
1 Post
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