Apply Thermal Paste

Heat management is important to consider when constructing or maintaining your computer. Too much heat can spell death for your sensitive components, and if you’re overclocking it’s even more of an issue. Knowing how to apply thermal paste correctly is one of the foundations of proper computer cooling. Follow this guide to learn how.

Steps

Preparing the Surface

  1. Choose the proper thermal paste. Most of the basic thermal grease compounds contain silicone and zinc oxide, while more expensive compounds contain excellent heat conductors such as silver or ceramic. The advantage to the silver or ceramic thermal grease is that you will have a more efficient heat transmission. However, the basic thermal grease will sufficiently fit the needs of most people.
    • If you are planning on overclocking your computer, try to get thermal paste comprised mainly of silver, copper, and gold. These are the most conducive metals that thermal paste can be made of.
  2. Clean the CPU and heat sink surfaces. Wipe the surface lightly with a cotton ball or cotton swab dampened with isopropyl alcohol. The higher the percentage of alcohol the better. 70 percent is good but 90 percent is better if it can be found.
  3. Sand the heat sink and processor surfaces if necessary. Ideally, the two touching surfaces will be perfectly flat, which would completely eliminate the need for thermal paste. If your heat sink base is rough, you can wet-sand it down and polish it to make it smoother. This isn’t always necessary, unless you are aiming for the ultimate cooling performance.
    • Thermal paste is designed to fill in the gaps and imperfections on the surfaces that you are joining. Since modern production techniques cannot make surfaces without imperfections, thermal paste will always be necessary.

Applying Thermal Paste to Circular-based Coolers

  1. Place a tiny drop of thermal paste to the center of the cooler base. The bead of paste should be smaller than a BB or a grain of rice. If you’ve read that it should be “pea-sized”, that is far too much paste, and you will end up with paste on your motherboard.[1]
    • There is no need to spread the paste for circular coolers, as the pressure of being applied will spread it evenly across the surface.
  2. Attach the heat sink to the processor. Install the heat sink with even pressure from all sides, and the bead that you placed on the surface will spread over the entire contact surface. This will create a thin, even layer that will fill any gaps but avoid excess build up.
    • As heat is applied, the paste will become thinner and spread more towards the edges. This is why using a small amount of paste is important, as a little goes a long way.
  3. Avoid removing the heat sink after installing it. It can be difficult to check if your paste has been applied correctly. If you break the seal that is created when you install the heat sink, you will need to restart the process, first cleaning off the old paste and then reapplying it.
  4. Reconnect the fan to the motherboard. The CPU fan wire should be plugged in the CPU fan socket because it mostly has the PWM function which allows the computer to adjust the fan speed automatically without changing voltage.
  5. Boot the system. Check that the fan is spinning. Enter the BIOS by pressing F1 or Del key during POST. Check if the temperature is normal, CPU temperature should be below 40 degree Celsius when idle, same for GPU.

Applying Thermal Paste to Square-based Coolers

  1. Apply paste to the base of the cooler. Applying paste to a square cooler is a bit more challenging than a round one, because simply placing a dot and applying pressure will not result in full coverage. There are varying approaches that people claim allegiances to, so we’ll cover a few of the more popular ones:
    • The lines method – Place two thin lines of thermal compound on the base of the cooler. The lines should be parallel and spaced so that they are each placed a third of the width of the processor. The lines themselves should also be about a third of the processor’s width in length.
    • The cross method – This is very similar to the previous method, but the lines are crossed in an “X” pattern instead of parallel. The length and thickness of the lines should be the same as the previous method.
    • The spread method – This is one of the most popular and effective methods, but takes a little more effort. Place a small amount of thermal paste onto the base of the cooler. Using a plastic finger protector or a plastic bag, use your finger to spread the paste evenly across the surface. Make sure to cover the entire surface that will be in contact with the processor, and ensure that you do not apply the paste too thick. In most cases, the paste should barely hide the metal underneath.[2]
  2. Install the heat sink. If you are using either of the line methods, apply even pressure to the heat sink as you install it to ensure that the paste covers the entire surface. If you are using the spread method, you MUST install the heat sink at a slight angle to prevent bubbles from forming. This is because the paste is usually spread too thin to compensate for bubbles after pressure is applied.
  3. Reconnect the fan to the motherboard. The CPU fan wire should be plugged in the CPU fan socket because it mostly has the PWM function which allows the computer to adjust the fan speed automatically without changing voltage.
  4. Boot the system altogether. Check that the fan is spinning. Enter the BIOS by pressing F1 or Del key during POST. Check if the temperature is normal, CPU temperature should be below 40 degree Celsius when idle, same for GPU.



Tips

  • Keep in mind, often times the thermal paste has what is referred to as a "burn-in-period" in which the paste gets more efficient and continues to lower the temperatures. Sometimes, this period is very short but often times it could be as long as 200 hours.
  • Thin thermal paste is ideal while thick thermal paste decrease the heat transferring rate. Thermal paste is for filling the gap between the chip and the heat sink, also the tiny up and down on them.
  • After cleaning the surface with alcohol, do not touch the surface with your bare finger. Your finger has its own oils that will damage the surface and harm the coolers.
  • If latex gloves are used to spread the thermal paste across the designated surface, make sure they are the powder free type. If powder and thermal paste combine, the heat sink will be degraded severely.

Warnings

  • Using oil based cleaners to clean your surfaces will ruin your coolers performance. They will prematurely and permanently fill the spaces the thermal paste is intended to, not allowing the paste to do its job. If the oil based cleaner is used and thermal paste is placed on top of it, the coolers will never work efficiently.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/256233-29-blob-spread-applying-thermal-paste
  2. ↑ http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=170&Itemid=1&limit=1&limitstart=4
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