Question about Thermal Paste

[TreeThug]

Hello, I am currently working on building my own machine.

What my problem is that I had accidentally touched the thermal paste that came with the heat sink and wore some of it off.

What my question is, will it be okay if I spread out some of my extra thermal paste onto the top of my processor, and put the heat sink with the worn off thermal paste on top of the thermal paste I spread on the processor?

 

[PP Mguire]

If you have a tube of your own stuff then completely clean off the stock paste and put a grain of rice (small) sized amount of paste in the center of the CPU then apply your heatsink.

Properly cleaning method:
Use a coffee filter or Qtips with 91% alcohol to clean off the bare metal of your heatsink and CPU.

 

[TreeThug]

If you have a tube of your own stuff then completely clean off the stock paste and put a grain of rice (small) sized amount of paste in the center of the CPU then apply your heatsink.

Properly cleaning method:
Use a coffee filter or Qtips with 91% alcohol to clean off the bare metal of your heatsink and CPU.

Would I have to spread out the grain-of-rice sized paste in the center or can I just apply the heat sink while it's a splotch in the center of the processor?

Also, just to be sure, I still have to completely clean off the stock paste even if it's on the heat sink and not the processor?

 

[Lexluethar]

You need to completely clean off the old paste with rubbing alcohol. I personally would remove the processor from the socket while doing this.

Allow the alcohol to dry. Once dry, apply the rice sized blob in the middle of the processor. DO NOT SPREAD IT OUT. Realize your heatsink will do this for you.

The reason you dont want more paste is if there is extra, and if that extra comes out the sides and drips down to the socket you can ruin your processor and motherboard.

 

[PP Mguire]

I actually leave the processors in the socket to prevent any possible damage on the bottom from happening.

As was said, grain of rice sized amount in the center, apply heatsink.

 

[TreeThug]

You need to completely clean off the old paste with rubbing alcohol. I personally would remove the processor from the socket while doing this.

Allow the alcohol to dry. Once dry, apply the rice sized blob in the middle of the processor. DO NOT SPREAD IT OUT. Realize your heatsink will do this for you.

The reason you dont want more paste is if there is extra, and if that extra comes out the sides and drips down to the socket you can ruin your processor and motherboard.

There was no old paste ever on the processor. It's a brand new processor that just shipped out to me 1 week ago. Every thing is brand new, the only problem is that i touched the stock paste on the heat sink a little bit and it wore off. Should I clean the paste off the heat sink and apply my paste to the processor and stick it on?

 

[PP Mguire]

Yes, but still clean the processor off with the qtip and alcohol too.

 

[Dauntae]

To help you understand what the past does, In actuality the best contact would be two surfaces perfectly flat and mirror smooth against each other and no paste needed, BUT we live in the real world and there may be a little unflatness and scratches in the metal so the paste just fills in the areas that don't touch and it's designed to transfer heat really well so it makes it as close to having it all touch with no air gaps it there as possible. Over clockers will actually lap (Polish and flatten) Both there CPU and fan to make them have as much contact with each other as possible but doing so also voids the warranty on the CPU so you don't need a lot of the past on there (Just the grain of rice) and when you put the heat sink on it will squash it and fill in all the scratches and low spots there may be on the cpu or heat sink. Make any sense to you now?

Dauntae