Best Way to Apply Thermal Paste? Does it Even Matter?

today let's talk about thermal paste application method and does it really matter this video is brought to you by my personal pocketbook so if you'd like to help me out like subscribe and check out my patreon page so i can make more videos like this one so i was under the impression that this debate was long laid to rest but considering some of the comments i've been getting on my youtube videos that are pertaining to thermal paste application people saying oh you need to spread it you need to do a line you shouldn't do a dot etc etc it's suggesting that that isn't the case so i figured i'd go ahead and revisit it right here i haven't done this before but there's plenty other videos about it and i'm not expecting any surprises from this experiment but we'll see so my test methodology was much like what i did when i was testing different thermal pastes i used my amd ryzen 3700x on the aorus x570 motherboard and this time i decided to use my amd wraith cooler with the fan set to 100 that's about 3000 rpm and the reason why i did this instead of using my aio was because well typically the wraith was getting higher temperatures than the aio i did a video on that so i was hoping that there would be more differences in the readings at least that was what i i hope so we'll we'll see how that goes but anyways i took the front side top panels everything off my case to have more or less an open bench scenario i ran ada 64's stability test for 20 minutes with the cpu fpu and cache boxes ticked i repeated the test three times making sure that the cpu was at the same temperature before starting each test it was about 33 degrees at idle and after testing i took the average of the averages which were taken from hw info cpu ccd one t die reading and my ambient temperatures were at about 22 degrees i tried i tried my best to make sure it was there and any variations in the ambient were within half a degree so i think it was it was quite quite close so after each set of testing i checked the spread but instead of like i did with my other testing where i reapplied if the spread wasn't quite right i wanted to make it more of like a real world scenario where i mean if you put on your thermal paste you don't know what the spread is like until you take it off and at that point you've ruined it you can't just put it back on so it's kind of like schrodinger's thermal paste or something i don't know even on my crack and cooler you'll look at the differences between the two it's very clear that this might affect the way that it spreads so we'll revisit that after we go through the results so the different applications i decided to do was the dot or the p method the rice grain method the line the x the pentadot the butter toast and finally just for fun the tiny dot so first up was the classic dot or p method it came in at an average of 76.4 degrees celsius and you can look at the spread there it's not quite up to par what i typically expect when i use my aio next is the rice grain and no surprise here at 76.5 degrees celsius with a similar spread after removing the cooler now the rice grains big brother the line came in to take the lead with a reading of 76.3 degrees celsius turning things diagonally we have the x or the cross with much more paste used than previous tests clocking in at 76.1 degrees so if you look at this one and actually take a look at what it looked like afterwards this is the first one that had really good spread but we'll talk about this a bit more in a bit and right there there's only a difference of 0.2 degrees this is we're talking very very small differences so not too dissimilar from that one was the pentadot i believe this is what amd recommends to actually use on the ryzen cpus and that's because their ihs is quite a bit bigger than what you'll see typically on older cpus and intel cpu so it makes sense that they would want to recommend that but whether or not that's going to make a difference or any real tangible difference we'll see so anyways that one came in at 76 degrees on the dot so at this point we're only 0.5 difference from our highest temperature and the last of these that we used in normal testing is the spread and this is the one that seems to be becoming more popular at least something that i've seen a lot of people recommend or saying that you shouldn't use the dot method or whichever other method you should spread your cpu paste so that one came in at 76.1 degrees so from this testing this is my testing from what i can gather it doesn't really matter which way you do this it doesn't matter which way you apply it we're having a difference of 0.5 degrees between all six of these testings that's like that's like nothing so this is this is the extremes right because we're using a to 64. this isn't just you know a gaming experience or even idle this is going to be unnoticeable when you're playing games you know we're we're talking about being in the 50s here this is putting the cpu to its limits and we're only seeing a difference of 0.5 degrees that's within margin of error you could say that it's not even working although in this case this is where i want to revisit the amd base plate is the fact that those grooves are actually causing the spread to malfunction in a way to not happen is the way you typically would see so let's compare the way that the amd cooler is spreading versus what my aio would look like the amd cooler you can see it's not quite reaching the entire ihs and what that means is there's small amounts of the ihs that aren't being covered that would typically be covered by a smooth base plate again like on my aio so this is obviously not a huge deal because where you really want the thermal paste is in the middle mostly in the middle and obviously it's going to make a difference if you have better contact on the entire ihs but from my testing here it seems pretty clear that it's not a huge deal so if you're someone who's using a race prism it seems pretty obvious just don't use the dot the line of the grain method use the x use the spread use the pentadot use whatever you need to do to get good coverage so for fun one last test i did was a tiny dot it was much like the dot or the p method but just a very small amount of paste and this is the first time we actually saw a difference from the other ones reaching in at 80.3 degrees celsius and finally finally a difference imagine if it was the same imagine there was a difference it was still like 76.5 or something like that you'd be like do we even need thermal paste at that point i would probably just like not put any thermal paste on and test it and see what happens so let's take a look here at the actual coverage that the tiny dot did you can look at the ihs and see that it's barely covered and you look at the bottom of the amd cooler and you can see that again barely anything on there in comparison to other ones especially the spread this one had the most right you can see the thermal paste spilling out of those grooves and obviously on the ihs this has been seen time and time again after each test those grooves are pushing that thermal paste out the sides which isn't great i'm wondering why it turned out like that why they don't have like a smooth base plate it seems kind of odd maybe there's a reason for it i doubt it but there could be i don't know but i i just have to quote somebody here i was reading in a forum recently and this guy replied his name was super dave and he said i suspect the line between correct and incorrect application of thermal paste tends to be closer to the presence or absence of the paste at all rather than some variation of application technique and he's absolutely right in my testing and what other people have tested that i've seen it doesn't matter it doesn't matter just put some thermal paste on there make sure it's enough don't put too little and it'll be fine all right so that is it for today guys i hope you liked the video and i hope this has kind of helped you realize that it doesn't really matter how you put the thermal paste on there just put enough on and it'll be great this has been tech illiterate my name is nick thank you for watching

Channel: Tech Illiterate

Views: 1,768,226

Keywords: Best Way to Apply Thermal Paste, Does it Even Matter, corsair tm30 thermal paste, corsair tm30 thermal paste review, corsair tm30, amd wraith cooler, wraith prism, how to apply thermal paste, best thermal paste application, thermal paste compared, thermal compound, cpu paste, cpu past, how to, thermal paste comparison, thermal paste application methods, tech illiterate, best thermal paste for ryzen, best way to put on thermal paste, best way to use thermal paste, heat sink

Id: ofyNgJyhGuc

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2020