Dell's stupid instructions for applying TIM.

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cyclone3d

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Aug 16, 2004
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This is taken from Dell's training material (I edited out the one other pic and video window). Never again wonder why previously worked on Dell computers have enough TIM on the CPUs and surrounding areas to choke a camel.

Not to mention they apparently don't do any spell checking unless "tne" is a new word I have, until now, been unaware of.
Also not sure what an "alcohol swipe" is. Pretty sure it is an "alcohol wipe".

And if all you use is the alcohol wipe instead of wiping it off with a paper towel or rag first, all you will end up with is a huge mess.

And when are they going to stop using that stupid CRAP TIM that hardens and/or separates?

Dell_Apply_TIM_Instructions.png
 
Swirl pattern seems like a good way to get some air pockets. And yes, I have had some so thick with TIM that I pulled the CPU out of the socket still attached to the HS after fighting with it for 15mins. It was one of their T20 home "servers" that out of the box had some rather high temps, even for the stock cooling, not surprising as the heat had to pass through what looked like 5mm of TIM.
 
Dell probably provides this instruction method as it lessens the chance a field technician would put a dab of thermal paste on the CPU that's way too small leading to poor temperatures and return visits. Companies like Dell and HP know their field technicians are not always the brightest bunch. Sadly, I've dealt with enough of them to be very well aware of this fact. We had a RAID 6 array with six drives lose three drives all at once. Three drives just don't die at the same exact moment. I would have looked at the controller or SAS expander / back plane. However, the genius technician decided to simply replace three of the six drives at once. Naturally, a RAID 6 array comprised of six drives can't stand the loss of half its drives at once leading to total data loss.

I also had to talk a field technician through identifying which of two RAID controllers needed to be replaced in a server. His paperwork told him what slot it was in. I had to help him find that over the phone. This took an hour and a half. This is the kind of crap Dell, HP and others have to deal with. Their standards for field techs seem to get lower each year. This is why a swirl pattern in thermal paste makes sense to them.
 
It is not the worst I have seen. I have used the swirl pattern method before, nothing wrong with it. Of course then I evened it out with a straight edge or razor blade...
 
Ive used all kinds of things, my initials, heart shape, star shape, even drew a airplane once on a rather large CPU.

Of course i spread it evenly with a stright edge before installing the heatsink
 
Master_shake_ said:
you guys who spackle cpus... you know the cooler does it for you right?
Click to expand...


To a point. But a sufficiently viscous TIM can resist spreading from just the pressure provided by the heatsink's attachment to the mainboard, and remain too thick for optimal heat transfer. Better to spread a thin coat on the CPU and heatsink base, properly filling in the microscopic pits and gaps and allowing as much metal-to-metal contact as possible.
 
Dan_D said:
Dell probably provides this instruction method as it lessens the chance a field technician would put a dab of thermal paste on the CPU that's way too small leading to poor temperatures and return visits. Companies like Dell and HP know their field technicians are not always the brightest bunch. Sadly, I've dealt with enough of them to be very well aware of this fact. We had a RAID 6 array with six drives lose three drives all at once. Three drives just don't die at the same exact moment. I would have looked at the controller or SAS expander / back plane. However, the genius technician decided to simply replace three of the six drives at once. Naturally, a RAID 6 array comprised of six drives can't stand the loss of half its drives at once leading to total data loss.

I also had to talk a field technician through identifying which of two RAID controllers needed to be replaced in a server. His paperwork told him what slot it was in. I had to help him find that over the phone. This took an hour and a half. This is the kind of crap Dell, HP and others have to deal with. Their standards for field techs seem to get lower each year. This is why a swirl pattern in thermal paste makes sense to them.
Click to expand...

I was an onsite tech for mostly Dell warranty repair for 2 years straight. So was my brother and one of our friends. There were also some other people in the same area that were good. There was only one person that we had for maybe 2 months before he quite that hadn't a clue.

And as for my current job, I've had techs come out a few times to do stuff just because it was stuff that I didn't want to deal with because I hadn't taken that model apart before... and plus we paid for the warranty so why not. And the techs need to get paid, so why not let them do the work and get paid for it?

I think there are about 3 different ones that service our area and all of them have been excellent.

Maybe some of the sub-contractors that Dell uses for warranty repair are just really sub-standard. There is a reason why they have a feedback form / survey for you to fill out after the service is completed.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
To a point. But a sufficiently viscous TIM can resist spreading from just the pressure provided by the heatsink's attachment to the mainboard, and remain too thick for optimal heat transfer. Better to spread a thin coat on the CPU and heatsink base, properly filling in the microscopic pits and gaps and allowing as much metal-to-metal contact as possible.
Click to expand...

And this is one reason I have switched to using Arctic Silver Ceramique II for pretty much everything. It spreads really nice and I have not had any issues with it in the 3-4 years I have been using it.

When I was doing Dell warranty repair many years ago, I had even resorted to using my own purchased with my money TIM for systems that had overheating issues because I knew that using mine over the crap stuff that Dell provides would reduce the load temps by 10-15C.
 
cyclone3d said:
I was an onsite tech for mostly Dell warranty repair for 2 years straight. So was my brother and one of our friends. There were also some other people in the same area that were good. There was only one person that we had for maybe 2 months before he quite that hadn't a clue.

And as for my current job, I've had techs come out a few times to do stuff just because it was stuff that I didn't want to deal with because I hadn't taken that model apart before... and plus we paid for the warranty so why not. And the techs need to get paid, so why not let them do the work and get paid for it?

I think there are about 3 different ones that service our area and all of them have been excellent.

Maybe some of the sub-contractors that Dell uses for warranty repair are just really sub-standard. There is a reason why they have a feedback form / survey for you to fill out after the service is completed.
Click to expand...

I used to do onsite repair work and work in a service center. At one time I was certified to repair just about anything and everything HP made. Back in those days, technicians were held to a higher standard. One of the reasons why repair practices have changed over the years is due to the decline in technician skill. At one time, you could take a consumer HP product into a store like Best Buy or Comp USA, and get it repaired by skilled technicians. Now you've got Geek Squad, which is virtually useless. Even before Comp USA closed their doors, product started to get shipped back to the manufacturer for repair rather than letting store technicians do it.

Back in the day, I saw two kinds of technicians. You had people who knew what they were doing and understood the products they were servicing. The second type is what I refer to this day as swap monkeys. They literally change out parts with no idea why or often times how to do it properly. Repeated improper diagnosis and over ordering of parts led to manufacturers bringing more and more repairs back in house rather than allowing "authorized" service providers to handle it. There are still some authorized providers out there, many of which I've dealt with working in IT. Most companies use some type of hardware vendor in data centers and many, if not most of those companies offer horrendous service. As was pointed out, a lot of times contractors from various companies increase warranty coverage area but that comes at a cost. That cost is competency.

There are lots of reasons for all of this. The principal reason was many of those technicians moving onto bigger and better things and more money. Prices dropped for technicians as companies tried to cut costs and when they started paying less, they got people with no pride in their work and no passion for it. With salaries dropping, they also had no way of retaining the good technicians. Of course computer hardware has gotten cheaper and more disposable, which also led to less demand for technicians. You really only see it in the commercial sector for servers and some workstations. Most of the people that work on consumer hardware just do upgrades and software work. Virus scans, OS restores, and that sort of thing.
 
Master_shake_ said:
you guys who spackle cpus... you know the cooler does it for you right?
Click to expand...

Right, the heatsink also does a great job of dropping globs of sometimes conductive tim onto the mobo around the socket. Spreading it first with a straight edge allows you to safely remove the excess before that becomes impossible.
 
I've done hundreds of CPU installations over the years. I've almost always put a dot of paste in the center of the CPU and then tightened the cooler down to spread it. After removing the cooler, I've always had pretty good coverage. I did this for literally every review I ever did. I'm not sure how many that was, but its probably around 150 or more reviews. This doesn't include the ones I built for customers in the 1990's and early 2000's, for friends to this day, and all of them I serviced in service centers or onsite and in the IT industry over the last two decades. The hardest part about that method is simply knowing how much paste to use. Admittedly, I've occasionally used too much or not enough but after having done it so many times I've gotten good at it.

I had tried fancier methods in the early days of building computers and found those worked fine, but were unnecessary.
 
Master_shake_ said:
i mean if you use too much then it's a you problem
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Obviously, but personally i put excess on the CPU intentionally so that when i scrape it off i have enough on the straight edge already to spread onto the heatsink surface as well. Then once both surfaces have TIM i install the heatsiink.
 
When you consider contemporary AIO coolers, some of which with very conservative thread stops to prevent over-tightening, and various motherboard thicknesses, different methods of TIM application can lead to different results. On a few AIOS I've had, a pea-sized dot of TIM in the middle would only spread out to a small circle since the cold plate was barely making contact with the heatspreader even with fully tightened mounting hardware. Most of us here would notice that and use washers or something behind the CPU socket, but the average user probably wouldn't.
 
cyclone3d said:
From 25+ years of experience, there is absolutely no reason to do that.
Click to expand...

There is though, if you take a straight edge to the CPU heatspreader and remove all excess TIM where exactly is the TIM that is supposed to fill the gaps on the heatsink contact area going to come from?
 
Rifter0876 said:
There is though, if you take a straight edge to the CPU heatspreader and remove all excess TIM where exactly is the TIM that is supposed to fill the gaps on the heatsink contact area going to come from?
Click to expand...

I was saying that there is no reason to do the whole straight edge thing at all. It is just a waste of time.
 
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