what is non capative and conductive paste?

[Konstantinos Koutse]

hell oguys im buying the MX-4 from arctic is it a good thermal paste? also what does non conductive and capative mean? and one last question is a little pea in the middle of the cpu enoguh thermal paste? can this method be usefull or ill damage my cpu?

 

[koffeeshop77]

GELID gc extream, best past out there! period non conductive and runs consistently 2 degrees cooler than others.

 

[Sleetz]

It is exactly what the description says.

For applying the thermal paste a pea works and a small line across it works, the goal is the get it to spread evenly across your cpu/cooler using as little as possible.

 

[koffeeshop77]

from air to water to LN. delided n all that jazz too

 

[Maxx_Power]

Conductive means the paste will pass electricity. Capacitive means the paste has a high dielectric constant and can act as a capacitor. If you put conductive paste on traces or joints of the boards that have exposed metals that are energized when in use, you short them out and cause issues. If you put capacitive paste over closely-spaced pins or on top of capacitors/electrical components, you can form a capacitor and inadvertently pass high frequency (digital, for example) signals to cause issues.

A paste that is non-conductive and non-capacitive means that it has low conductivity and low dielectric constant so that you can use it and not worry about shorts if it ever touches electrical components or pins, etc.

As for the spread method, the currently accepted best approach to heat spreader (lidded) CPUs is to apply a pea-sized amount (or a thin line along the direction of the actual CPU die underneath, you'll have to figure out which direction the die is in by looking at some googled pictures) at the center and allow the heatsink to push down the paste into a large coin-sized circle. This avoids spreading of the paste onto parts of the heat spreader that isn't in direct contact with the die. This method works best for fairly viscous (usually more viscous than honey) pastes. The less viscous pastes (which are runny) can be applied liberally because the force is more than enough to spread them out as thin as you want.