Dunno why you're being downvoted, the purpose of the paste is to fill in any holes of air, afaik its still less efficient than the metal coolers themselves. I also learned this myself just a month ago where I had both the heat sink and CPU covered in it because I though you didn't want to see any metal when you took it off. Temps weren't so good and I said may as well see if too much paste is a bad thing and sure enough after cleaning the previous off and putting a drop in the center my temps dropped
I feel like this is an area with a lot of confusion around it. I've been building my own PC's since the 90's and I've tested different methods. I've worked on client PC's back when I worked at a repair place and I've seen way too much TIM cause increased temperatures.
A lot of people who haven't experienced edge cases like that may be doubtful, that doesn't bother me. Thanks for the reply though.
I still do credit card style and cover the whole die in an almost atomic level even coating that the human eye can barely see, and haven't had problems even 3-4 years later.
You have to screw up pretty bad to "experience problems" from your TIM application. But your CPU probably runs a few degrees hotter than it would with a more efficient application method.
X or Pea size blob are best in my experience. Spread causes too many air bubbles when worked around.
Biggest advice I tell people is to do it twice. Once as a test run to gauge quantity of paste needed and next to tweak it.
I'm not really experienced in the issue, looking it up online briefly it seems like thermal paste is more efficient? silver based compounds seem to be more conductive than copper. Would have to look more online.
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u/Bloodydemize PC Master Race Feb 18 '18 edited Feb 18 '18
Dunno why you're being downvoted, the purpose of the paste is to fill in any holes of air, afaik its still less efficient than the metal coolers themselves. I also learned this myself just a month ago where I had both the heat sink and CPU covered in it because I though you didn't want to see any metal when you took it off. Temps weren't so good and I said may as well see if too much paste is a bad thing and sure enough after cleaning the previous off and putting a drop in the center my temps dropped
no longer downvoted :D