QOTW: How do you apply thermal paste?

[DevDrake]

A few blobs here and there, how it's applied doesn't really matter.

I'd hope the guy who bought shares in Thermal Grizzly and (afaik) played a big part in the development of their pastes knows what he's talking about so I'll trust him.

method 1 from the movie.

[Dareos]

paintball gun

you need to be accurate mind...

[Wrinkly]

Tinfoil works far better than paste.

[peterb]

The "bloke" is right. You spread it with a credit card to make sure it gets an even layer all over.
It comes from old days, where you put it directly on the cpu core. There were no heat spreader or what it's called on top as we got today. So a lot more thermal paste is needed now

I’m terms of thermal resistivity, air is the highest, followed by thermal paste, and the lowest is metal to metal contact, which is why those you want the best thermal conductivity lap the surface of the CPU and heat sink to get flat smooth surfaces with no or filled micro voids.

Thermal paste is to fill those micro voids (for those of us that don’t want to void warranties and/or risk damage) but not to (thermally) insulate the metal to metal contact, so the method has to be to apply the minimum amount and get the thinnest layer possible. The thermal performance often improves after the CPU is powered up as the paste softens and excess is squeezed out improving the metal to metal contact area.

[=assassin=]

Over the past 13 years I've only built two PC's, although with the first PC the motherboard failed, so I had to obviously reinstall the CPU and Heatsink all over. With that first PC, I used some Arctic Silver, and simply put an amount slightly larger than a grain of rice in the middle - I tested how far it would spread at first by putting some on a piece of paper, and putting a heavy weight on it and pressing down, so the amount would be roughly right to spread enough. With my second PC, I didn't bother with Arctic Silver, and simply used the white goo that came with the heatsink/fan, but due to this, I decided I would very thinly spread it over most of the CPU heat spreader. Both methods seemed fine, and resulted in decent temperatures for me, better than those I ever saw online for the same product. I'm not sure what I'll do next time, as I don't know whether I can 100% be bothered with doing my own tech support again, as hardware issues had to be solved by me, and the only way to test when you have no spare compatible parts, is to buy other parts! Next time (another year from now) I'm tempted to get one of those CPU/Motherboard/RAM pre-built bundles on Scan so they can do the testing for me, although I'll probably weigh things up based on what I can afford to do at the time, seeing as Brexit will likely be killing the value of the £ even more by then.

[Xlucine]

I put it on my heatsink. It's got direct contact heat pipes, so a smaller area than the heatspreader, and it's a lot easier to get to. Spread a thin layer (so I can scrape off the excess), stick on, and torque the retention nuts as far as they'll go (which for my cooler works fine, might not for all coolers)

[Iota]

Used to use Arctic Silver (small blob, spread, place cooler and slight twist) which always gave good thermals. Now I just use the pre-applied stuff on the Corsair Hydro coolers (still do a slight twist). Thermals have never been an issue.

[Percy1983]

Been using the pea for years, just installed my 3700x and went for the X and things aren't central under there.

[Korrorra]

The small pea in the middle method. Seems to work well. With Ryzen 3000 series things have changed and may have to use a different method.

[darkrapture]

I applied a small pea sized amount to the center of my Ryzen 5 3600, it seems to have worked well.

[Shane74]

Past few build I haven't really needed to, The AIO cooler already has it on.
And the temps are very good so I don't bother with after market pastes now.
Older builds I used to apply 2 step arctic clean thermal paste remover and then the arctic clean purifier, Then apply Arctic Silver 5 I think it was way back then using a bit of hard plastic to make a thin layer all over.

[philehidiot]

You can also apply it with an American civil war cannon.

[Phrontis]

Very small amount of engineers blue in the middle of the chip and then spread out using an old credit card to form a very thin film of blue on the whole surface. Position the heatsink on top and then wring it slightly side to side and back and forth a couple of mm. Lift the heat sink up and check to see if there are any major high spots and check that the blue covers the heat sink pretty well all over. If all is OK then put the smallest amount of heat transfer paste on the middle of the chip that will fill the gaps shown up by the blue and wring the two together again. Done!
If there are high spots after bluing then VERY CAREFULLY scrape them using an old high speed steel hacksaw blade that has had its teeth ground off and then ground at one end to form a scraper, removing the minimum so that the high spot is removed.

[Hoonigan]

Very small amount of engineers blue in the middle of the chip and then spread out using an old credit card to form a very thin film of blue on the whole surface. Position the heatsink on top and then wring it slightly side to side and back and forth a couple of mm. Lift the heat sink up and check to see if there are any major high spots and check that the blue covers the heat sink pretty well all over. If all is OK then put the smallest amount of heat transfer paste on the middle of the chip that will fill the gaps shown up by the blue and wring the two together again. Done!
If there are high spots after bluing then VERY CAREFULLY scrape them using an old high speed steel hacksaw blade that has had its teeth ground off and then ground at one end to form a scraper, removing the minimum so that the high spot is removed.

You don't actually do that.... Do you?

[Boon72]

Always a grain of rice size paste in the middle of the CPU

[Giraffe]

Put a pea on, done. OR, I recently bought one of those graphite pads for my r5 3600. Idles better now than it did with the paste (40 instead of 46) cooler was torqued the same. doesn't go past 65 in games.

IME the paste gradually hardens and needs to be 'refreshed' every few years (i.e. if I remember). ATM I'm using Noctua NT-H1 and it's been on for nearly 3 years so should be good for a while yet.
I'm interested in the graphite pad as it won't dry out. The electrical conductivity doesn't matter as it won't be running into the socket. So long as it fills in the 90% of voids between the 2 faces it's done its job.