Cleaning Thermal Paste off CPU?

[Richie]

I happened to acquire 2.5 litres of medical quality Methanol about 2 years back.... Was meant to be used with the water injeciton kit for my car but never got around to it...

[dpm]

Oh yeah, and LINT FREE CLOTH!
CPU dies can have sharp edges - you don't want strands of cotton wool everywhere!

[iamwhoiam]

yeah, lint free cloth... well the blue checkered cloth you use to clean windows would do too

[Lujan]

Just walk into your local chemist and as for some Isopropyl Alcohol. Mine charged me £1 for a full bottle.

[Theo]

I use white spirit, too. Works completely fine.

Kitchen roll (Bounty, the stronger soaker upper!) does the trick in terms of rubbing, too.

[Zak33]

Gin has always done for me....dunno about Vodka..dont drink it

[megah0]

Isopropyl alcohol and a cotton bud followed by buffing with some kitchen roll does me.

I used to work in a laboratory and had many opportunities to acquire 5 litre bottles of the stuff

[Saracen]

I find Isopropyl alcohol isn't very good at removing hardened gunk, so I use white spirit, which IS good at softening and then removing the gunk. Having cleaned the worst of the gunk off, I then give the heatsink and/or CPU die a good cleaing with Isopropyl alcohol to remove any impurites left over from the white spirit. This process is simple, easy, fast and cheap.

(And I got the Isopropyl alcohol from the Chemist, about £1 for a 500ml bottle).

Alternatively, Carbon tetrachloride does a pretty good job too, but you won't find that at all easy to get hold of these days (and if you do have it, I hope you know how to use it as it can be nasty, which is why it is now banned outside of specific applications).