Question Accidentally messed up the pre applied thermal paste

azy19

Honorable
Nov 17, 2014
6
0
10,510
If you have more I’d wipe all that off and start over, especially with it being in the middle.
Not the answer I was hoping for. Don't have any on hand and it's getting late so no stores open. Not in a hurry though so I will follow your advice and pick some up tomorrow. Thank you!
 

azy19

Honorable
Nov 17, 2014
6
0
10,510
I mean you can try it out, worse case is it runs a bit hotter but shouldn’t be dangerous. Worse case you have to remove and reapply anyway.

i looked up some similar posts and got a few different answers. Personally I would want to play it on the safe side and would rather not have to reinstall the fan later on.

I was wondering however, will it possibly spread a bit and fill in the holes after putting it on?
 
Dec 15, 2019
34
2
45
Agree, it will spread and fill the hole, though it might not be the most optimal. But with this amount left you have absolutely no risks of overheating due to lack of thermal paste, trust me.

I mean, to me this is no big deal, i would have mounted the cooler in the same situation.
 
For future, just get a small tube of Arctic silver from online for about 5 bucks to keep. Then if you change coolers etc, just about a rice sized dab on the CPU and spread it out will do. Some guys like to use heatsink to push the paste. I like to use a finger and spread the paste over the CPU.
 
Jan 11, 2020
15
0
10
You'll be fine, if anything it might run slightly hotter than normal, but it's no big deal. However, the stuff that comes pre-applied on coolers isn't usually that amazing anyways, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to replace it something premium like some liquid metal or something
 
For future, just get a small tube of Arctic silver from online for about 5 bucks to keep. Then if you change coolers etc, just about a rice sized dab on the CPU and spread it out will do. Some guys like to use heatsink to push the paste. I like to use a finger and spread the paste over the CPU.
Using your finger will put skin oils into the paste, if you use your finger have a nitril glove on to keep from contaminating it and no clean-up.
 
Either way. Can always add more lol. My method works ok for me. Finally getting a chance for my paste to set back in. Running 3.8ghz on my 1700x at 1.325v. Hit my CPU with Intel burn test the other day and got max temp of 66. But only using a b350 board. Maybe if I switched to a x470 or b450 I could go a little higher, but the paste is doing it's job it seems.