“Too Much Thermal Paste” – Benchmark of Thermal Paste Quantity

hey guys so you just caught me applying throw paste to an ad 86 K this is something we normally don't put on camera because it gets so much criticism I'm honestly not sure why we don't put that much paste on there it's not like it's an insane completely absurd amount it's always very reasonable but people still comment out of being too much paste or too little paste and it just seems like the kind of thing that no matter who you're talking about which technical youtuber which user they are always going to be comments about their own tastes hang on I need to transfer over to my Andy socket and apply a good amount of paste to that socket as well we're just building a couple systems today hopefully they work really well after all this thermal paste before that this video is brought to you by EVGA a 19th anniversary giveaway EVGA is giving away over $80,000 of components and it's retro themed that 19 year anniversary including two signed GN mod mats and also several full systems GPUs motherboards and more to participate click the link in the description below to start EVGA scavenger hunt screenshot competition or gaming events click the link below to learn more today we are finally testing something that everyone on the internet loves to comment about and that is throw paste applications so we've tested this several times in the past we tested it with thread Ripper tested it with even recently the H 100 Pro AC tech paste versus manual paste there are times that thrown paste application matters there's a caveat there and we'll get to that later but it's basically it always just just cover the IHS so we're gonna recap some of that stuff towards the end of this content but today what we're focusing on is an Intel Sai CPU so this will cover smaller desktop CPUs rather than h EDT and then we're also testing basically small blob like pea size which is kind of the common size that you hear people recommend to new builders will test the larger blob that's kind of still within the realm of sanity for someone to do but definitely too much and then we're going to do absolutely for sure too much thermal paste and also a manual thin spread across the IHS so the thin here it's not about which method as in which pattern is the best we've done that testing it's basically irrelevant but then of the day all you have to do is make sure the whole house is covered from most of those high-end CPUs so we're not testing like X versus a blind versus a dot vs. thin spread that's not the goal the goal is the quantity of their own tastes and nothing else so this topic came about again because a new system builder sent us a tweet a while ago and said hey I just built a new system and I posted a video on YouTube and people said I applied too much thermal paste do you think it's too much I looked at it and I said no that's not too much but it caused this question to arise which is at what point is it too much thermal paste without going completely nuts and emptying an entire tube this is a actually some pretty expensive paste to empty out on it the thermal grizzly cryo not paste but it was worth the gag so without emptying an entire tube how much is too much that's what we're testing today couple things to keep in mind first of all this has been done in the past we tested thread Ripper IHS sort of Occupation of thermal paste versus the smaller area spread by an ASA tech cold plate for example we tested a stacked plates versus full-sized cold plates different tests we tested x99 CPUs recently with age 100 I Pro for a standard circular spread versus manual spread we've done it but now we're doing this on an Intel platform with a smaller CPU which is kind of a standard for Rison as well as some differences in the MCM layout and we can finally look at the question all the comments that everyone posts the reason that we don't show thermal paste applications because it triggers stupid pointless comments and discussion and address it and see is there any validity to all of that so a couple things to get through here first before we get into testing testing methodologies always will be fully defined in the article in the description below Patrick wrote the article you want to check out how we tested what we did check out that article it will detail all the test components it'll detail the paste used little detail the status the CPU the overclock all that stuff it's all down there we're carefully controlling for the current we have a current clamp on the 12-volt rails we make sure that the CPU is pulling the same amount of current for every test and thus the same amount of power in terms of wattage and then we also keep the bio settings with manual voltage adjustment manual core clock adjustment everything's manual everything's fine tuned manually on our 8086 case everything is very carefully controlled including room an ambien which is logged at second to second with a thermocouple reader so that's the basics again quick note that the test here is focusing very specifically on a standard sized desktop CPU not talking about h EDT today and then finally why paste the reason we use throne paste at all and we have an old video on this from a tldr episode about how heat sinks work the reason we have thermal paste is to fill the gaps tiny microscopic imperfections often between the IHS and the cold plate of the cooler and all that it needs to do is fill those gaps having more thermal paste is not better it's actually worse because you have more of an interface to get through so you want to have as little throw haste as possible between those gaps to make sure there's not air pockets between the cold plate and IHS because IHS is nickel plated copper cold plates often copper those are two roughly 400 500 watt per meter Kelvin surfaces or materials that should be conducting directly but they can't because of manufacturing tolerances so instead they're tiny air pockets air is something like zero point out of three or 0.7 depending watts per meter Kelvin for thermal conductivity depending on the temperature of the air and that's obviously not great compared to 400 so you put in a thin layer of thermal compound that's why it's done let's get into the testing again methodology defined below and GP is by the way completely sort of different idea but I'll talk about that later the first test was the big blob the big blob test was the first one with usable results that we had we had a couple ones with unusable results which will be detailed in the article we'll talk about why they were unusable this is an excessive amount of thermal paste but within the bounds of what a sane human might use the blob measured at ten point one two by twelve point t2 by 3.1 millimeters and size with the three point one being depth from a depth gauge the cooler installed and tightened down only squeezed out a little paste over the edges of the IHS and there was a layer of paste that remained between the cold plate and the CPU naturally conventional wisdom says that a really thick layer of paste is bad since ideally the cold plate and IHS should be as close to each other as physically possible but we'll wait until the end of the concept to compare temperature averages keep in mind that cooler tension forces the paste out of the sides when excessive and that removing the cooler will relieve that his tension to clarify the after shots do not show what the pace looked like when it was hidden under the cold plate because we can't see that the surface tension during cooler removal will sort of suck the pace back up and inward toward the middle of the cold plate so it's not 107 what it looks like but you get the idea here's an overtime chart showing the data for the big blob test we'll compare these results to the others at the end of the content for now we're bouncing between 58 and 61 degrees Celsius delta T over ambient and will average the results later current is around 21 amps or about 250 to 256 watts at the 12 volt rails this next application is thin spread this is the application method that we use for tests that specifically involve CPU thermal or cooler testing that's because this is the most easily reproducible method and we can control our application repairable testing especially when we're talking about multiple staff members doing the same test this is also because we use the paste from tubs not from tubes for most of our tests and there's no better way to apply it for many enthusiasts this method the manual application method which often uses a spreader of some kind like this one the manual thin spread application method is spoken in hushed tones and comes from ancient PC building tradition where divin errs and whirling dervishes every clairvoyant and how the paste will spread once you apply the cooler to the socket have long foretold that this application is the best and so we decided to test it so knowing that the paste Whisperer is out there and the soothsayers of thermal paste deem that this is the most critical aspect of any PC build ever on the face of the planet their own taste application it seems suitable to look into it and see does it actually produce a difference we're just doing a dot in the middle that's reasonably sized and so as the Mystics have foretold that spreading a thin layer ensures maximum contact between the cold plate and IHS and thinning it out makes the gap between the two as small as possible we can look into whether or not that helps in this instance our application can be seen in the photos both before and after but again note that the flash on the camera makes the application appear a bit thicker than reality don't worry it was pretty damn thin you could almost see the IHS under it one worry with this method is that the uneven surface could trap air bubbles when the cold plate is practical instead but there's no indication that this was a problem in any of our testing and we did multiple test passes here's our overtime chart of performance it's worth mentioning that regardless of thermal performance a thin layer of thermal paste is really easy to deal with there's a less danger of uneven coverage it uses a minimal amount of paste and it's easy to clean up there's also the peace of mind that comes from knowing with 100% certainty that the IHS is fully covered without ever taking the cooler off next is the pea-sized dot method this is the method we use for tests where CPU temperatures aren't vital like building a new Windows OS we're just testing to see if all the components work it's extremely fast and repeatable that may not matter much to the average user but we swap out multiple CPUs and coolers a day and convenience really matters the first photo showed the dot but the after photo reveals what one of the downsides of doing just a blob of paste that's kind of on the smaller side which is that extra care is needed to put even pressure on the cooler when tightening it down the hot spot over the die was covered but one corner of the IHS was left dry that's something we avoid a normal testing but in this test it's an important variable that we want to account for this is a potentially real user result and so we test it under these conditions our overtime chart thus far reveals a mostly similar results but we'll have to look at the average results at the end of the test for a more conclusive analysis as a note the pea-sized dot was nine point one six millimeters by eight point seven six by two point nine seven deep this last method is one that we simply dubbed too much it's 50% of the comments on YouTube about their own taste with the other 50% being too little in this instance we really did apply way too much objectively just to make absolutely sure that there's no question this is a wasteful amount of paste even regardless of performance even in a scenario where performance is the same this is clearly just plain wasteful and annoying to clean up especially if you're using high-end compound dimensions are immeasurable here but basically the entire IHS with a one point seven six millimeters height at the peak using a depth gauge is what we ended up with here's our overtime plot this is just too much paste again the cryo dot paste we used isn't conductive but some are and even when they aren't it's still no fun to clean the gunk out of a CPU socket even still in the overtime plot we're really not seeing bad performance it's pretty comparable to the previous test that we've done as seen in the picture not only did the paste is out all over the edges of the CPU it also dripped out over the socket cover and the motherboard when the cooler was removed so probably don't do this but in terms of thermals as you've seen thus far it doesn't look terrible we'll get into more of that in a moment now that we've looked at each test individually the before and after photos ensure that the current provision was the same for all of them clocks are the same all that stuff ensure that we tighten the screws on the cooler in the same exact fashion and pattern for every test lots of controls here for testing now that we've done all of that we can look at the average core temperature at steady-state rather than these individual overtime chart so it's a bit easier to read and this will include the current for each test which will help illustrate the power consumption being the same for each test as always note that current times voltage gives you power so we're trying to get watts current times voltage our voltage is 12 volts down the 12 volt rail for EPS 12 volt cables and that puts our power on average at around 256 watts or there abouts assuming the 21 to 21 points something amperage for the current all data lands within margin of error here looking at our steady state or equilibrium chart and well within margin of error at that point because our top to bottom range of results equates 0.77 degrees celsius of difference that's between the so called pea-sized dot and the second pass of our thin paste spread our error permits for this difference there's not enough statistically significant difference here to establish a real performance Delta between the results all results land at about 58 degrees delta T over ambient plus or minus zero point four six degrees Celsius from the median average current as clamped at the 12 volt rails was 21.5 amps with only marginal differences within variance test conditions remain the same room ambient and HVAC were controlled and monitored each second and the liquid cooler was permitted to reduce water temperature between tests down to study stage idle in between each test pass we feel confident in our data on the CPU remember this is a 256 watt load with a dee-lighted CPU using liquid metal more of the methodology below so this is one of the most likely scenarios where you would see a difference in the quantity of pay impacting results it's a lot of heat a lot of power and it's a fairly high overclock so because of this the conditions of the thermal interfaces are stressed thus creating an environment that would yield differences should any exist it just doesn't seem like they do this last graph is a mess but that's intentional so let's walk through it this graph includes the temperature logs for each of the valid tests but zoomed in to a range of 8 degrees we know the scale is insane but that's kind of the point almost every data point within the test period falls within a two degree range and that range is 58 to 60 degrees Celsius delta T over ambient the reason the graph is hard to read even at this scale is that the temperatures are all almost exactly the same our testing here agrees with many of the tests that been done in the past both by us and by other media outlets it's we've seen this before in our own content ages ago Luke anyone remember Luke tek-tips in that period of the Linus tech tips where Luke was on camera a lot of the time well Luke did a video on this as well and saw pretty much the same thing so we're not the first people to see this we've instituted a ton of controls here just to make sure it wasn't variance because thermal testing is hard to do right there's there is a lot of variance genuinely with a computer so we've done a lot to control that and we're just we're not seeing a difference on this platform under these test conditions they need to keep in mind different type of pace maybe if we use some garbage paste that's super low thermal conductivity maybe has some Kurian issues or something like that you might start to see differences in data arise how relevant they are it's hard to say but when we're pushing for higher end or even more realistic user scenarios it doesn't look like a lot of difference on this platform there are differences on things like thread it fur on X 9 X 299 h EDT platforms things that have a large IHS and we'll go through some of those in a moment but just remember here putting a moderately sized blob in the middle the IHS is pretty safe for the most part asterisk see the HDD t-section in a moment but for the most part that's fine same with the P size test it's just the only thing to worry about is if you're covering the whole IHS or not and as long as you do that you're fine things to be careful of of course would include if you're using a conductive there I'll paste some of these back here are a couple of them are conductive so using anything like a diamond compound or silver compound or anything that has conductive properties because it's got metals in it that would be a concern of using too much because you use too much and it spills over the socket and gets onto the board you might short an SMD or something like that but that's you would have to basically empty a tube to cause that to happen so it should be something you don't really have to worry about actively so putting too much paste on the socket won't generally hurt their own performance because tightening the cooler down squeezes out all the excess that's why it's okay to put so much on there even an hour too much test the socket tension deals with most of it too little paste is bad but anything above the minimum threshold should be more or less fine and once the cooler is tightened down it pretty much equalizes everything anyway so the problem with the excesses and thermals is just dangerous shorting components being wasteful blowing through an entire tube of thermal grisley cryo not things like that and they are an active advertiser of ours not on this video but if you want some will link it below anyway so let's recap some of our older coverage just to illustrate that this can be highly situational despite our results being relatively conclusive for the Intel desktop part here today as a recap we previously conducted similar testing for the AMD threader for CPUs published one year ago the testing conclusively demonstrated that the biggest consideration particularly with multi chip modules like thread Ripper is that all dyes need to be covered you can see in our TR for paste application thermal chart that full a HS coverage also helps something we demonstrated again and our nock to a full coverage plate thread ripper benchmarks and we illustrated this yet again in our animatics ELC benchmarks where these small ASA tech cooler cold plates struggled to keep up the difference with thread refer again is that we're working with a multi chip module and a massive cpu package this is the opposite of a small case Q Intel CPU and although similar in multi die approach to rise in the desktop and the CPUs are significantly smaller finally our most recent testing of this kind involved the ASA tech made coarser H 100 I Pro where we demonstrated that manual application improves cooling performance in a meaningful way we spread paste out over the entire heat spreader of an X 99 CPU as opposed to using these stock cases like circular application that covered only the central portion of the HS and there's one key difference here from the other stuff the testing involved in X 90 9si bu it was actually pretty blast heat than our 8086 k that we tested with today but the significantly larger IHS meant that there is more to be gained from covering the rest of it the AC tech circle neglected about 25% of the heat spreader service area and the h1 high pro cold plate is a bit smaller than previous ASA tech designs which also mattered because this is again a larger chip so different test conditions apply the 8086 k application methods never left more than 10 to maybe 15% of the spreader uncovered and that was in the pea-sized dot where we had one corner slightly uncovered so that's the main difference between the thermals quick recap then just make sure that IHS is covered you're fine anyone who's in the comment sections complaining about people applying too much thermal paste or too little thermal paste probably just shut up and stop because it actually almost never mattered there are instances where it matters a good example of some times when you should be more careful about having maybe too much instead of too little would be a GPU there's no heat spreader on a GPU it's just an exposed dies direct contact so this is a great example where if you apply too little and you have a corner of it just slightly uncovered and some of the dye is not getting cooling it's got a hot spot in there the problem is those cores can burn out and it's happened and it's really not that difficult to make it happen so GPU is an instance where we would lean towards too much rather than too little because if you do anything above again the minimum threshold for the amount of paste to cover the whole die assuming you're not doing manual spreading anything above minimum threshold should be fine as long as you're not going just completely unreasonably crazy with how much paste reapplied same goes for the most part for the desktop CPUs except there's a bit more tolerance for having too little because there's an IHS there to spread the heat out and as long as you cover the central die area where the die is actually located under the cold plate you can get most of the heat out of there it'll be fine and then there's obviously some kind of compound between the die and IHS anyways you don't have to worry about a hot spot forming between the dinah HS where the die is most susceptible to damage like a GPU so it's a bit different but also similar in some other ways so yeah just make sure you cover the whole thing and beyond that it's really not worth worrying about so thank you for watching it was fun looking at the old Luke tech tips video from years ago on this topic and hopefully we did it justice by going a bit deeper on it as well as time has now permitted more things to come out like thread refer which didn't exist then and that obviously is a bit of a different scenario that's all for this one subscribe for more toys get a store that gamers nexus net to support us directly you can buy our new beer glass we just got in actually it's got a gold trim on it and the GN tear down logo on a cobalt coloured glass or pick up one of our video card tear down posters and go to patreon.com/scishow cameras and access to join our discord I'll see you all next time [Music] you

Channel: Gamers Nexus

Views: 2,516,559

Rating: 4.8309579 out of 5

Keywords: gamersnexus, gamers nexus, computer hardware, thermal paste application methods, best way to apply thermal paste, how to use thermal paste, correct amount of thermal paste, thermal paste thin spread vs. dot, too much thermal paste, too little thermal paste, thermal paste benchmark, thermal paste test

Id: EUWVVTY63hc

Length: 20min 57sec (1257 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 26 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/SigHunter0]

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3346-thermal-paste-application-benchmark-too-much-thermal-paste

[u/YoSmokinMan]

I've been saying this for 15 years. The HS will squeeze out the vast majority of any excess. Some people act like it'll stay as a thick pad over the IHS. No. I shake my head every time I see "too little is better than too much."

[u/1leggeddog]

tldw; doesn't matter

[u/ndarealcookiemonster]

I think he used too little in the beginning...

[u/ProfitOfRegret]

I thought GN had a way to silkscreen thermal compound onto the heatsink/cpu?

[u/NycAlex]

i think this falls under: "common sense".

[u/beornog]

Linus tech tips did a video on it