Best way to apply thermal Paste?

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I always put a rice size dab in the middle and when applying the heatsink rotate it a little bit each way two or three times. Then give it a few hours for the pressure and heat to works its magic and make the seal.
 
Yeah but how many mounts have you done Slay? Like 2. :D

For the record I am going 250+ mounts for the Buffy Slayer.

To many to count :D

But it's a waste of paste to put it on the corners...it only needs to be in the center.

Plus it's probably going to squeeze around the edges and make a mess.

The whole heatspreader gets hot so it's more than just the center that we need to be concerned with. I'll be remounting my True Copper tonight so I'll take a picture of the paste pattern and post it :D
 
Arctic Silver 5 blows. And those instructions are only for Arctic Silver, other manufacturers have different recommendations.

Here's the paste pattern of my method.
patternr.jpg
 
Just because I'm new here, doesn't mean I'm new everywhere, my friend. I use Tuniq-X2 as well as AS5 among others (depends on the build), and I have yet to have a problem for any of them, sans the weird factory paste that most gpus and aftermarket coolers come with. I've built quite a few myself and from my experience, so long as proper ethics are enforced in application, it's really down to semantics. Both of my heavily OC'd 9800GTs(soon to be 2x GTX260s sli and 1 9800gt physx) with aftermarket coolers never run above 36c under load, and 24c idle. As for my cpu, it's an i7 860 at 4.15 ghz (1.45v) (all cores/no speedstep) and idles at 34c-36c, 42c full load. However I realize that everyone has an established method, and I respect that, to each their own. I understand the reasoning behind coming here and having to make 40 posts before you even get sig privileges, but I'm not new to this rodeo by any means. I have mostly been in the performance laptop sector(but build rigs too) where cooling methods really really count and every little bit that you do right, gives you that much more headroom in such a confined space that architecturally resembles a hamburger with an LCD mounted.
 
is it too much paste if it amost covers the whole cpu? I did slays method some spots do not fully have the paste and some parts a a little bit thicker than others. is that alright?
 
I always put a rice size dab in the middle and when applying the heatsink rotate it a little bit each way two or three times. Then give it a few hours for the pressure and heat to works its magic and make the seal.

Ditto.....works well for me and always had great temps....alittle thermal paste spreads along way.
 
As for my cpu, it's an i7 860 at 4.15 ghz (1.45v) (all cores/no speedstep) and idles at 34c-36c, 42c full load.

Run LinX with Hardware Monitor, Real Temp or Core Temp running in the background and post a screenshot to prove those temps or they never happened.

LinX - http://www.youwatched.com/datajay/linx(0.64).7z
Hardware Monitor - CPUID
Real Temp - Real Temp - CPU temperature monitoring
Core Temp - Core Temp

is it too much paste if it amost covers the whole cpu? I did slays method some spots do not fully have the paste and some parts a a little bit thicker than others. is that alright?

You want the heatspreader to be almost fully covered, see my pic above.

After you attach the heatsink twist it a little, if possible. Then run the PC for a few minutes, turn it off and while it's still warm twist the heatsink again, if possible. This will help speed up the "curing process" so to speak.

Everytime the cpu heats up and cools down the paste will thin and thicken resulting in a small redistribution of the paste each time. Pastes like TX-2 will cure almost immediately, within the first 2 or 3 power on & off cycles. Pastes like Arctic Silver 5 won't fully cure until the PC has cycled on & off 10-20 times (or approximately 200 hours of on time).
 
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