Why nobody talks about how much thermal paste application has changed

I remember 10 years ago when I first started building PCs, everyone swore by the pea-sized dot method for applying thermal paste. That was the golden rule, you put a little dot in the middle and called it a day. Fast forward to last month and I'm swapping a cooler on a Ryzen 7 in Phoenix, and I decided to try the spread method with a plastic card. It was a total pain and took forever, plus I worried about getting air bubbles. Now I'm back to the pea method but with a tiny bit more paste since these newer chips have bigger heat spreaders. Has anyone else noticed that the old rules don't always work on these new CPUs, or is it just me?

3 comments

3 Comments

evan_davis1d ago

Wait, wait wait. You're telling me old Arctic Silver 5 was like clay? I have a tube of that stuff from like 2013 I still use sometimes, and I always thought it was just getting old and thick. Now I'm wondering if I've been spreading literal paste cement on my last three builds. That explains why it was such a pain to work with on my 8700K. I just figured all thermal paste was supposed to feel like cold peanut butter.

kai_burns731d ago

That Arctic Silver 5 tube from 2013 is actually still fine to use, the consistency is just how it was made back then. I've got a tube from 2014 myself and it works exactly the same now as it did ten years ago, but you do have to warm it up between your fingers for a minute before applying. The real trick with that old stuff is to spread a super thin layer across the whole IHS with a credit card or something, don't do the pea method or you'll end up with air pockets and bad coverage. Those new pastes like Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut are way more liquid and actually do run off the edges if you use too much, totally different ballgame.

keith2741d ago

Man, the "pea sized dot" thing really stuck with us for way too long. I think the bigger heat spreaders on AM5 and LGA 1700 are the real reason the old rules seem off, but nobody mentions that the paste itself has changed too. A lot of the modern pastes are way thinner than what we used back in the Haswell days like Arctic Silver 5. That stuff was almost like clay, now we got pastes that are basically liquid and spread way easier. So the pea method with a thicker paste was fine, but with these new thin pastes, you gotta use a bit more or it just runs off the edges. I've had to learn the hard way that there's no one size fits all anymore, especially with how hot these new chips run.