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I've been building PC professionally since the 90s. Thousands of PCs. This entire stuff about thermal paste application is blown so intergalactically out of proportion that there's just no way to convince people there's NOTHING TO THIS except two simple concepts:
1) A thin even coat on the heat spreader, whatever amount is just enough that you can't see through it is enogh. A little more is fine. You don't have to be super precise.
2) Over application doesn't affect anything EXCEPT if you get so damn much on it that it squeezes out the sides, oozes everywhere, and gets uder the chip or all the heck over the motherboard. I see that once in a while and it's silly. If you follow #1 above, you won't get anywhere close to his happening. It's EASY.
That's IT! You're going to get the same temp results +/- 1C vs every other weird method. And if you actually spread it out yourself over the heat spreader rather than peas or dots or god-knows-whatever, you know it's all covered! Imagine that!
And yes, I just spread it around with my finger carefully no spatulas or credit cards totally unnecessary.
Before application, or to remove and reapply, alcohol cleans up the IHS and your heat sink just fine. Nothing special needed.
(if you don't get it on the tiny ears on the AMD heat spreader it's not the end of the world, but it's easy to just dab a little on them... so do it.)
Which paste do I recommend this year? If you want something that is both very close to "the best" and also reasonably easy for novices to spread (the higher end the paste, the thicker and less easily spreadable it tends to get) Arctic MX-6 is exceptionally good and will get you a couple extra degrees compared to most of the others.
MX-4 is cheaper, also good enough, and it spreads like literal butter with no effort at all. 30 second job.
1) A thin even coat on the heat spreader, whatever amount is just enough that you can't see through it is enogh. A little more is fine. You don't have to be super precise.
2) Over application doesn't affect anything EXCEPT if you get so damn much on it that it squeezes out the sides, oozes everywhere, and gets uder the chip or all the heck over the motherboard. I see that once in a while and it's silly. If you follow #1 above, you won't get anywhere close to his happening. It's EASY.
That's IT! You're going to get the same temp results +/- 1C vs every other weird method. And if you actually spread it out yourself over the heat spreader rather than peas or dots or god-knows-whatever, you know it's all covered! Imagine that!
And yes, I just spread it around with my finger carefully no spatulas or credit cards totally unnecessary.
Before application, or to remove and reapply, alcohol cleans up the IHS and your heat sink just fine. Nothing special needed.
(if you don't get it on the tiny ears on the AMD heat spreader it's not the end of the world, but it's easy to just dab a little on them... so do it.)
Which paste do I recommend this year? If you want something that is both very close to "the best" and also reasonably easy for novices to spread (the higher end the paste, the thicker and less easily spreadable it tends to get) Arctic MX-6 is exceptionally good and will get you a couple extra degrees compared to most of the others.
MX-4 is cheaper, also good enough, and it spreads like literal butter with no effort at all. 30 second job.