Re-applying Thermal Paste - How to clean off old paste

I have an NP9150 with a 150EM shell. I ordered some IC Diamond thermal paste to apply to my cpu and gpu, and I have my laptop opened up enough to get to both. My problem is with cleaning off the old paste. There's a ribbon around my GPU that has come partially off, with paste underneath. It is sturdily attached at the top right corner.


(Apologies for the blurry photo, hopefully you can see what I mean)

Until this point I've been putting 70% rubbing alcohol on cotton swabs to clean off the old paste, but there seem to be connections under the ribbon and I'm hesitant to put the alcohol on them. What should I do?

 

Clean it all with 100% isopropyl alcohol nothing else.
Then reattatch the ribbon on top to protect the area containing resistors etc. Try to use icd7 which is non-conductive. If other pastes were used in the past which are conductive clean it scruplously..

 

I'm assuming you mean 99% since I'm pretty sure 100% doesn't exist, but no one near me seem to carry 99%, and I definitely want to finish this today since I already cleaned most of the gunk off. Are you sure 70% won't cut it? I've seen a few other posts that say 70% should be just fine.

 

There's special cleaner too that you can purchase, but it's not really necessary. The isopropyl alcohol should do the trick (even acetone works), and 70% will be fine. You don't want paste on the PCB either, as tron mentioned.

 

The paste around the core will have no impact on the cooling however.

 

rubbing alcohol and q-tips

 

I've used the 70% rubbing alcohol multiple times without having any problems. I just make sure to let the GPU dry for a few minutes since there will be microscopic water droplets. One of those clothes for glasses works really nice in this case. You can remove the black plastic thing, but you may find that bits of thermal paste have become stuck to the studded area beneath plastic. I used a Q-Tip but got some fibers caught there. Thus, I found that a polishing or glasses cloth works well for this case. I am currently using a microfiber polishing cloth used for finishes on automobiles. Its just that once you get the IC diamond onto the cloth it wont come off no matter how hard you wash it.

 

If you want to clean off the excess round the edge just use kitchen paper, it would be too abrasive for the die but around it does not matter, just then use a fine cloth to polish it.