Changed position of heatsink after applying thermal paste

Awan__

Prominent
Jul 17, 2017
2
0
510
Hello,
I'm completely new to pc building. I had put thermal paste(small ball shaped) then put my heatsink on it and attached 2 screws to it. After that I realized the heatsink was in The wrong direction so I removed it. It was kinda stuck, but it came of easily. The paste was still wet so I just re-adjusted to the proper direction and fixed it. My question is do I need to remove wipe out the thermal paste and re-apply it? Or what I did is alright?

Thanks for reading this and replying.
 
Solution


It will be fine as it is, most pastes need time and heat to cure anyway and that can take a few days to a couple of weeks, so as long as the heatsink wasnt off for a lengthy amount of time, it will be fine.

Seanie280672

Estimable
Mar 19, 2017
1,958
1
2,960


It will be fine as it is, most pastes need time and heat to cure anyway and that can take a few days to a couple of weeks, so as long as the heatsink wasnt off for a lengthy amount of time, it will be fine.

 
Solution
Did you spread the thermal paste first or just applied in center and then put the heatsink on? If you did not spread it evenly over the top of the CPU, you need to do that before applying the heatsink. Just putting some in the middle then installing the heatsink will not work very well.