Heat sink and thermal paste

Well, I am bookmarking this thread. Thanks everybody.

@Bill_Bright,
I bought some 99% alcohol at my local Meijer's pharmacy section a while ago for pretty cheap. And thanks for the tip on the micro fiber cloths.

 

Wow! I've never seen 99%. I think the highest I've seen is 93% but typically what I find, and have now is 91%. Keep the cap on tight or it might evaporate before you know it!

Sure. Just don't use it on your glasses afterwards. Smeared TIM on glasses is a little hard to see through! I'm just saying.

 

trust me those small soft pads are not the adhesive ones you refer to. i have had people reuse them without any issues in the past. these are the ones that come right off the chips and do not stick they are the soft ones that simply come right off. so we will disagree there.

and for the average person who does not have anything else paper towels are better than anything else just laying around i have seen people use tissues which are a HUGE no no.. so if something has to be used from what you have in the house paper towels are imo the best bet are there better yes but most people dont have much else at home and as long as its a high quality paper towel it works just fine. again we will have to disagree there. imo be careful with certain microfiber some microfiber has more lint than any paper towel out there. if you use microfiber use the type used on glasses NOT the type used to wax a car for instance those give off fibers like crazy... as i said i used to own a car shop and we tinted AND painted cars there trust me we would never use that kind of microfiber on a car waiting to be painted due to the fibers from them.

myself i prefer not to spread tim except on chips without heatspreaders. i prefer the line or dot method personally, it depends on which cooler / paste you use. the heatpipe type coolers work FAR better with the line method and i apply it to metal between the heatpipe directly first and spread it in to fill any gaps then apply to the heatspreader. as i said i participate in overclocking competition and never once had issues with these methods. in fact these are followed by many competitors, and i take it very serious when competing with dry ice and ln2 i have traveled over to various places in europe for contests as well as attend many of the shows each year....and my 26 years includes being a former robotics team designer and engineer as well as building / designing home and car audio amps from scratch and working with major car audio companies in speaker design, as well as many other things. i also own full hot air and ir re-flow workbenches and re-balling machines etc.. trust me not new to this... not trying to argue with you but i can assure the op i would not give them false info and these methods work just fine.

 

What is your opinion on coffee filters. I have heard people recommending them. In fact, I used coffee filters to clean my cpu and gpu when I applied the thermal paste last time and they did an excellent job.

I guess, it depends on the place where you were born and where you spent your childhood. I lived the first 20 years of my life in a place where the temperature only drops a couple of degree below zero, not more. So for me -11F is serious business. My cousins who are born in Minnesota do not mind this much cold as I do.

By the way, I am sure it is way colder here in north west Minnesota than eastern Nebraska.

 

I guess, one should just use the manufacturer's recommendation for spreading thermal compound. Arctic silver 5 manufacturer recommends line method for desktop CPUs and spread method for mobile CPUs. To spread the paste evenly in the line method, you need to press the heat sink down and gently move it clockwise and counterclockwise wise to spread the paste, otherwise the paste will not spread. See this youtube video for various application methods.

and this one

 

imo dont use as5. i PROMISE you if something like mx-2 or pk-1 is used you simply put a drop and and set the heatsink down and lock it in place and it will very nicely spread itself. as5 is def thicker and does need a bit more to get a "perfect" seating also can be conductive to a slight extent. i highly recc pk-1 is super easy to use and easy to spread and very cheap and almost every test shows it beating as5 pretty well. pk-3 is awesome but its a bit more pricey and harder to work with by a little bit than pk-1 is. i personally dont like the pk-2 nearly as much. otherwise mx-2 and mx-4 would be my choices im not a huge fan of mx-3 and mx-2 can be found really cheap for a decent size tube. it also has a VERY long shelf life as well and spreads very easy and evenly with just heatsink pressure.

coffee filters can work well just check them ahead of time for fibers that come off. some of the cheaper ones are not that great. and they dont clean up a thick paste very well but can work well for a final cleaning.

i love the cold and i miss it. we never see snow here and i wish we did. i played ice hockey and was a snowboarder / skier growing up and i miss it dearly i would go back to where its cold in a minute but the wife refuses lol..

 

Nothing personal but whenever someone says, "trust me" as an argument to convince me of something, I invariably don't! I am a "show me" type of guy, especially when it comes to electronics maintenance.

That said, your insistence got me thinking about something I have seen in other applications - in recent years on LCD inverter boards, and for years in portable radios (I used to maintain military police, fire & rescue portable radios too) - devices subject to vibrations, knocks and drops (and an occasional kick!). And that is silicone thermal "gap" pads or "filler" pads as seen here and here.

Understand those pads, while MUCH better than nothing, are not near as good as proper layer of thermal paste. Why? Because they are thick pads (microscopically speaking) that sit between the mating surfaces. And as stated before, direct surface to surface contact provides the most efficient heat transfer. They were initially designed for use on surfaces that are NOT precision machined to be flat - as CPU dies and heatsinks (at least better heatsinks) are.

They are designed to compensate for large gaps - as filler materials to push out insulating air. They are used more commonly today by manufacturers as a convenience (read: lower assembly costs/higher profits) during the assembly process as they come in easy to handle sheets that don't make a mess or adhere where not wanted.

Because you can does not mean you should, or that performance is not affected. Same goes with "normal" TIMs.

I concede they (or some of them anyway) can, technically, be removed and reused. But I can find no documentation to say you should! Just as I can find no documentation that says you can reuse the more common types of TIM - even though you likely can - in some cases.

These pads (with their high silicone content, are not adhesive, but are sticky or tacky and therefore, if exposed to any dust (as happens during HSF disassembly) will collect dust.

Remember, motherboards, graphics cards, notebooks, PCs, hard drives, etc. are manufactured and assembled in "clean" environments. Not basements, garages, or spare bedrooms.

Therefore, I stick to my original statement and regardless the type TIM - whether paraffin pads, basic silicone grease, high tech silver or ceramic, or gap fillers, always replace the TIM with new TIM after removing the heatsink - at least if you want the most efficient heat transfer.

Agreed!

I would not trust coffee filters either. They are made out of paper therefore there WILL be paper dust. Plus, they are not very soft and may scratch a copper surface if enough force is used. So I recommend sticking with a soft cotton or better yet, a microfiber cloth for eyeglasses as they are designed for cleaning and polishing smooth surfaces.

***

While Nebraska winters are shorter and not quite the extremes as those further north, make no mistake, they can be brutal with real temps in -30s. And when the winds whip across the Great Plains, as they often do, wind chills reach into the -70s. And I would argue - since Nebraska is squarely in the middle of Tornado Alley, severe weather is much more common, and severe, than Minnesota.

And for the record, I spent most of my first 30 years in the desert southwest of New Mexico and Arizona - much in the Phoenix area where forecasters did not call it "hot" unless it hit 110!

I have now lived in Nebraska for 25 years and you never get used to the bitter cold - especially on windy days when you just cannot hide from it. But you MUST learn to survive in it. If you plan and prepare ahead before stepping outside, you can totally blast out the interior of a filthy, nasty PC in less than 5 minutes. And by "filthy, nasty", I mean a PC that has not been cleaned in a very long time, if ever, this is used by a cat owner who smokes around his or her computer.

 

correct those are the type i am reff to and they are still normally considered "thermal pads" by repair techs from the companies. and yes they are designed to take up a large gap and while i do not like them and would prefer not to use them they are widely used especially in laptops and many times on gpu's especially laptops gpu's. and as i also said "as long as you keep them clean", what i do with those if i have to re-use them ever is i have 2 small pieces of copper sheet i cut into around 5-6" squares and i clean those then using only the tip of a CLEANED flat tool i made or you could use a very small flat screwdriver remove it and place it directly on the copper and then cover it with the second piece. this keeps them clean while working with the board then they can be replaced do not touch them with your fingers and if they tear they need to be replaced period. i see these all the time in laptops which is why i was unshure of why you did not know what i meant. i handle warranty work for many companies.

 

I see these all the time too, but not with CPUs and since this thread is about CPUs, I got a little tunnel vision. My mistake.

That said, I still don't reuse them - if at all possible.

 

my point was *if* you had to re-use them... not saying i like to so we agree on more than we think lol

 

And we agree on that too!