QOTW: How do you apply thermal paste?

[MooseheadDry]

I rebuilt lots of PC lately and the one I use is in the center size of a pea. Did not receive any complaints yet.

[Bambooz]

Blob in the middle for anything that has a heatspreader, cover the entire Die in an even layer for (duh) bare Dies (especially when it comes to comparatively gigantic GPU ones)

[krane]

I put a slightly larger then a grain of rice blob, then spread it with an old credit card. I have been doing this for a number of years and all is well.

[Phrontis]

You don't actually do that.... Do you?[/QUOTE]

To be honest not so much these days, the quality of the big name heatsink manufacturers is so good there is no real need. But it always helps to check, the CPU's were always OK.

[Shirley Dulcey]

I have usually opened up an alcohol wipe, either to clean the old paste off if I'm reapplying or to get the stuff off my fingers afterward. So I use the edge of the packet that the wipe came in to spread the paste.

[Noxious89123]

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.

When you say pea size, do you actually mean it? I remember seeing an image online a few years ago of an actual pea sat ontop of a CPUs IHS, and it looked huge; definitely far too much paste.
Do you actually use a blob more like a "bb" or "grain of rice" size?

A pea sized blob honestly is very big.

[the_Unforgiven]

The way I have been doing it for over a decade is to put a little bit of good quality thermal paste like Arctic Silver 5 or now I use NT-H1. I then spread it with my finger, yes finger, that way I can spread it thinly & get the best coverage. It was easier with the AS 5 than the more fluid NT-H1, but it can be done. I find applying this way, I use less thermal paste & I know it covers ALL of the CPU. To remove old thermal paste I used to use nail polish remover, the one with the highest g/L of acetone, but now I use methanol which is a by-product of me making 'shine' and cotton balls. I use as many balls as it takes to get the old thermal paste off. That is the way I have been doing it for over a decade on my gaming rigs & customers computers

[ik9000]

so all that finger grease goes where?

[dennis97519]

using thermal grizzly, so applying an even layer with the included applicator