Applying thermal paste

Hi, is there a good guide on how to apply thermal paste to a CPU? I thought it was about time to replace the previous thermal paste in my laptop but I've never tried it before so any links or tips would be appreciated.

 

I'm pretty sure you'll find a few guides at Arctic Silver's web page. They'll have a bunch of different techniques for different products on different CPUs; though I honestly think that the different techniques result in negligible differences (if any). You should be fine so long as you evenly and thinly spread the paste on the CPU and you don't have a heat sink with major deformities.

 

See if these help..
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=77860
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3339276&postcount=1

If you're using AS-5, they have a guide of their own.

 

Arctic Silver has a guide for their products such as Arctic Silver 5 and Arctic Silver Ceramique.

Make sure to clean the CPU and heatsink with isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol and cloth before applying fresh thermal paste.

The key is to use just enough thermal paste. Too much thermal paste can make temperatures worse (like when Apple overheated MacBook Pros by putting too much thermal paste).

Finally, do not eat the thermal paste! It is probably toxic even though it looks like peanut butter.

 

Thank you friends! I am using Artic Silver 5 so I'll follow that guide!

Oh and I'll try resist the temptation to eat the thermal paste

Also, this is slightly un-related but I recently ran "CPU-Z" application and was confused at something, I wonder if any of you guys could explain it. The CPU core speed is stated as being 1186.6 MHZ while I am web browsing here but the CPU speed is rated at 2GHZ? Is this just a feature that CPU's underclock while not doing anything intensive or is there a problem? I play some games and I'm wondering if this is affecting performance or does the CPU adjust to full speed when playing games and things?

 

That is because of EIST (Speedstep). It dynamically adjusts the multiplier and voltage, as per CPU requirement. When you'll game and CPU power is needed, it'll upclock to 2.0GHz.

If you effectively want to reduce load temps, checkout the Undervolting Guide.

 

Ah I see, thanks!

 

you only need enough paste to cover the die and make it such that you cannot see it, the thinest possible layer possibe where you cannot see the cpu. that is what you aim for. The entire idea is to simple fill the tiny inperfections in the surface of both the heatsink and the die, doing so creates complete contact between the two. Too much leads to bad contact, and too little is just pointless....