It's resting on a carpet?

They used to give you big tubes of that paste so might as well use it all 😀

The thermal grease is everywhere except where it should be.

🤣 Good replies people. Hal 9000 is correct. Also, the camera angle doesn't show the chipboard panel the mobo is resting on.

It looks like an abstract artist was having a blast with the grease.
I would think the grease can shortcut the capacitors on the CPU base. But I am not sure.

retro games 100 wrote:

Also, the camera angle doesn't show the chipboard panel the mobo is resting on.

Ah, I just get a kick out of ebay auctions where they lay the hardware directly on the carpet.
When I locate some dead hardware I'll take pictures of it resting on a large wool sweater and post it on craigslist with a high price, I'm curious about the responses.

Actually, that was my rather poor photography. (The flash bulb is broken on the camera.) The board + CPU are both alive! I've only just removed the heatsink after buying this board about 6 months ago on ebay, and was startled to see what was underneath it! 😉

Gah, I hated, hated, hated trying to apply the thermal paste the last time I did a CPU upgrade. What a frustrating experience! And it's so easy to botch things up each time you apply and remove and re-apply.

Eventually I wound up shelling out for a whacking huge brand-new heatsink with pre-applied thermal paste, and danged if I'm ever going to take it off again.

One easy way of applying grease to CPUs, and also removing the stuff is to use a q-tip. The amount of grease you need is small, typically about half the size of a grain of rice. It's best to use a bit less than you think you'll need, then add a bit more if required, than the other way around. 😉

Edit: There's a drawback to q-tips, and occasionally a tiny strand of cotton comes loose from the bud. Doesn't happen often though.

There is conductive and non-conductive thermal grease (those with silver in the name maybe). For me this looks like the latter on the photo so no problem there.

retro games 100 wrote:

One easy way of applying grease to CPUs, and also removing the stuff is to use a q-tip. The amount of grease you need is small, typically about half the size of a grain of rice. It's best to use a bit less than you think you'll need, then add a bit more if required, than the other way around. 😉

The disadvantage of a q-tip is that its larger surface area will mean that more of the paste will adhere to the q-tip. That's fine if you've spent $20 or something on an entire tube of paste that you're only going to use once or twice, but if not the credit-card or finger-in-plastic-bag methodologies would seem to be better.

But then, you'll find all manner of different strategies of application all over the place. Pretty much the only thing everyone seems to agree on is that you really only need a tiny amount. Some say you don't need to bother spreading at all, and just need to smush the heatsink on top! I think in the end you only need to be extra careful if you've got an unusually hot CPU and a low-end or stock heatsink.

Another interesting point of discussion is where exactly to put the paste: just on the CPU, or on the CPU and also on the heatsink? Perhaps the best method is to put it very thinly on to both surfaces?

I avoid putting it on the heatsink because it can be hard to predict the exact CPU contact area. I find it's better to just put enough extra on the CPU to fill in gaps in the heatsink - which isn't much.

On my latest system (Intel Core i7-860), I followed the instructions included with my Noctua cooler: I put a small bead of the included thermal compound on the middle of the CPU and just made sure to twist the heatsink back and forth slightly before locking it down to spread it that way.

On my previous desktop (AMD Athlon64 X2) I put a little Arctic Silver on the middle of the CPU and pre-spread it to cover the entire CPU before applying the heatsink. I did this because I was worried about it leaking out onto the surrounding capacitors, as Arctic Silver is conductive.

I don't bother lapping/sanding my heatsinks, I'm not sure if it really helps (or that it doesn't hurt).

I did that with Arctic Silver 5 once just to prove that it wasn't conductive to the morons who can't be bothered to read AS's web page and just keep repeating the same forum hearsay. 😀

I slathered it all over the exposed capacitors and the various bridges. I then proceeded to run Prime95 on it for a few hours.

swaaye wrote:

I did that with Arctic Silver 5 once just to prove that it wasn't conductive to the morons who can't be bothered to read AS's web page and just keep repeating the same forum hearsay. 😀

In the past, they didn't claim electrical non-conductivity (except for their Ceramique compound). It looks like they're now splitting hairs and saying that it's capacitive but not outright electrically conductive.

There are probably also other brands out there that are straight-up electrically conductive, so it's best to play it safe.

They've said "negligible conductivity" since AS1.
http://web.archive.org/web/20001011080937/htt … .com/index.html (2000)

Stick a multimeter into the stuff and measure resistance. You'll get infinite. I slopped it all over the surface of a Thunderbird. All over the capacitors and bridges there. I saw no apparent effect. If you got it into the socket it would probably act as an electrical insulator.

Over the years I have seen people use copper greases and such which are clearly electrically conductive by design. There is also that Coolaboratory liquid metal alloy stuff out there, and it also reacts with aluminum and apparently does a sort of cold weld over time 🤣.

But these days I just use Ceramique. It's quite cheap, it's consistent and it lasts. I've seen some of those terrible online paste "reviews" show Ceramique outperforming AS5 too. 😀

For my new desktop I just used the stuff Noctua included with their cooler (in a little tube, not pre-applied). It was probably NT-H1, which slightly outperforms AS5 from what I've read.

Got some photos archived too, sometimes you couldnt belive what you see.

Well I've learned that you can never expect people to know what they're doing. 😁

All that paste makes me think of icing......