I changed my GPU thermal paste 2 days ago. I guess I need to open it again and empty the rest of the tube.
The only thing too much thermal paste does is leave a mess, but you might need thermal pads on VRMs for better contact
Wouldn’t sharing heat from a processor directly with other chips be a bad thing? Always imagined you could fry the little chips by the CPU or GPU or whatever you’re cooling
The chips are going to have a similar tolerance to heat. They’re all silicon and the fundamentals of how they work are the same. So if may be making a chip hotter than it normally would get, but still within its operational limits it’ll still work fine.
Though there is the argument that if the chip otherwise wouldn’t get that hot that you’re subjecting it to more thermal stress by subjecting it to wider temperature swings than it would otherwise experience. However, I wouldn’t worry too much about that as by the time that might be a problem, something else would have given out long before that.
Too much thermal grease is a barrier to heat, because it should only replace the air (a potent thermal insulator) between uneven surfaces. Oil would be better, but that runs away.
Which is also why you shouldn’t smear the grease, because then you get air pockets. Rice corn or spaghetti method displaces the air on putting the cooler on.
Rice corn or spaghetti method displaces the air on putting the cooler on.
I’m not familiar with those methods and “rice corn or spaghetti” makes me think you boil the the paste first
Idk what rice means here, but I can guess corn is just a bead in the center and spaghetti is the same thing but you have a narrower tube so the ball looks like spaghetti.
Rice sounds like it wouldn’t be enough paste to cover the die. Like you’re just putting down paste in a very small line the size of a grain of rice. That’s not gonna spread enough, bruh.
It’s not glue lol.
It’s paste. Which means it’s edible. 😌
Back in the very early 2000s a friend on mine that I thought was pretty technical heard me talking about thermal paste and he had never used any. After telling him about the benefits he was excited to get some and use it on his new PC he was building. He came in the next day sad, said it had fried and he thinks it was the paste. I asked how much he put on and his response was “umm, like icing on a cake”. in my head it was even worse the the posted image.
Oof, it’s nice that most thermal paste these days is non-conductive
Is it odd that this is not even close to “bad” I have seen? Hell I have seen things shipped from production with this level of glorp.
Reminds me of this:
How does someone get to know thermal paste is a requirement without accidentally seeing how it’s required?
This is like knowing petrol is needed for your new car, then just stopping at some point, referring to the note “Get petrol” and deciding pumping it into every orifice the car has is what that means. “I assume that’s what that meant. I’m in a rush. No time to Google how to pump this “petrol” thing into the car.”
I can’t remember the video but it was some dude from a major computer YouTube channel fillmed himself building a PC. He used a grounding strap that wasn’t grounded and did all this crazy crap. They ended up taking it down fairly quick but not before everyone made fun of it. I think even he used thermal paste though.
It was the verge lol
I saw another video where the famous YouTuber censored out the thermal paste pattern sort of as a joke but sort of genuinely heading off comments disagreeing with how he put it on.
Engine oil? Well, petrol comes from oil! Better fill it up! Air goes in the intake, and we need fuel and air to mix. Throw some in there!
Oops all thermal paste!
Me when I have to use anti seize in the shop
The bigger the gob, the better the job!
Loads of goo? I can count on you!
At that point it’s just thermal paste with slight hints of computer.
Oh no, oh no no no no no.
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Optimal thermal paste thickness (bond-line thickness) is critical for heat dissipation. The layer should be thin, ideally between 25 µm and 50 µm, which is roughly the thickness of two sheets of standard paper. The paste’s sole purpose is to fill microscopic air pockets between the metal surfaces for better thermal conduction. Source, I spent 6 months in a laboratory experimenting with and producing thermal pastes and insulators. I spent days cutting and cleaning copper squares, applying the experimental pastes, and testing thermal conductivity via the application of Fourier’s Law of heat conduction.
Q = kA(Δ T/Δ X)
Where Q is heat flow, A is the cross-sectional area, and Δ x is the paste’s thickness.
That’s way more paste than you need for 50 µm application.
Drops Mic
Back in the Athlon days before heat spreaders everyone wrote about lapping the heatsink on glass so less thermal paste could be used.
Did you say 50mm of thermal paste?
Microns, not milimeters. One micron in 1/1000 of a milimeter.
Ah, my bad. 1000. So 50km of thermal paste?
No! There’s no way to measure 50km accurately in your house. He obviously meant 50kg.
You sure its not megameters?
You heard it from the expert, folks, 50magnets
I think he said 50m…
50 miles is too far for paste
To add to this to much is also a problem because it can trap air itself and create air pockets that way
I can’t tell if this is satire. If not, you say it doesn’t hurt to use too much, but I would say that a company would want to save all the money wasted on applying 20x the required amount…
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Love how you ignored my response to your response that provided a scientific rationale demonstrating that you don’t have a clear understanding of how thermal paste works, and you just doubled down on flawed opinions. Carry on friend.
Edit: Based on the law of heat conduction, as the paste thickness rises it will reduce heat flow based on the math of the formula. Less is more.
this has got to be a troll post. right? RIGHT?!
as you pointed out, just get rid of the air gaps with the absolute minimal amount of paste.
my back woods method
ensure your heat sink does not have pre-applied paste or a pad. apply a small amount of paste. cut the thickness with the short edge of an old credit card at about a 30° angle, using just enough pressure to bend the card slightly so the smooth surface of the card presses paste into voids and the trailing edge of the card removes excess to level the surface - you will likely still be able to make out some chip package markings through the paste. remove all edge excess and spillage. fit your heat sink. done.
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The best part was being accused of being a troll. There is no sense in playing chess with pigeons, they just knock all the pieces around, shit on the board, then claim they won the game.
not worth discussing
Writes a novel
did your article measure aging? assuming you didn’t fry your PC with the excess paste, there is no edge seal on voids when you use too much. over time most paste will dry and crack, creating new voids and hot spots. there is a difference between hour old transfer compound and 2 year old compound.
The perfect amount would be a very thin layer, evenly distributed with zero waste. This is very much not that. At best you could argue it’s a quick way to do it that is worth the trade-off, except for the valid point the other commenter made about too much actually reducing heat conduction.
Witness me!
Don’t do this
Yeah: Use a paintbrush to cover the whole motherboard instead.
Get a couple cans of spray thermal paste.
Fill up the entire case until it is one big block. The smoke is just the paste settling. And the flames. Also the Fire department. It is settling.
Not sure I see a problem here, this all looks intended. I’m not familiar with this device though. Since the heat sink plates are so big and the screws are so far apart I’m not sure they could get away with less without potentially missing contact with a sink. It seems more like bad mechanical engineering than bad application.
Thermal compound has a thermal resistance. It’s better than air, but not as good as metal. The best application is a layer that fills all the air gaps, and no more.
Adding to this… Airgaps is not emphasized enough here. There is a reason why you don’t do closed shapes when applying thermal paste, and why so many system builders have strong opinions on how to apply it.
Personally, I go for an X or a % where the os are actually dots.
I still do the just under pea sized amount right in the middle, have always gotten a good spread with it.
Who is saying that is the major consideration here?
Its obvious the major problem here is ustable movement and flexing when those large sink plates are screwed down will not distribute the paste very well resulting in a higher risk of air gaps. So they left a lot of room for it to press out and it doesn’t look like they used a ton of that space.
