GPU thermal paste question

[Ihaveworms]

I am going to mount my water block on my 290 tonight and have a question about that. I know with a CPU you only need to put in the center and let the pressure spread the paste over the IHS (with the chip only being in the center of the spreader). The GPU chip does not have a IHS, though. So therefore, wouldn't you want to the the entire GPU chip to have thermal paste on it? Should you spread it a bit more so you don't have any bare spots?

 

[Nenu]

It should spread so there are no bare spots regardless of method.
The idea is to use enough to cover the surface, as thin as possible and not trap air.
This is why a central blob works well, as long as there is enough pressure to force it to spread thinly over the whole surface.

If you are sure that the base of the heatsink is truly flat with no burred edges, you can rotate the block left/right while pushing a little to help spread the paste.
This is how I fit my heatsinks and used the same technique when gluing ramsinks on my video cards memory to get the thinnest application spread over the whole surface.
Any excess gets pushed over the edges.