Can we talk about how long I was using thermal paste wrong?

I spent like 3 years putting a pea-sized blob in the center of every CPU I touched, until a buddy at a shop in Denver pointed out I was using way too much on Ryzen chips specifically. The stuff was oozing over the edges and making a mess of the socket area. Has anyone else had a moment where they found out their go-to method was totally backwards?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannah_west3914d ago

Yeah, did the same thing with my Ryzen build, the X method works way better.

fiona_carr2614d ago

Did you switch to the X pattern too or are you doing something totally different now? I've heard people talk about the dot method for Intel and the line method for Ryzen but I'm not sure if that's just old advice at this point. The oozing over the edges thing got me worried about short circuits on the motherboard. Did your buddy give you any specific guidance on how much paste is actually enough for those Ryzen chips?

thea60213d ago

The dot vs line thing is mostly outdated, modern CPUs spread paste just fine either way. You don't need to worry about short circuits from a little ooze as long as you're not using conductive paste.