Welcome back to the workshop. Today we're going to be checking out different methods of applying thermal paste. The
line, the P, the the X, the whatever.
We'll check them all out. This question was submitted by Nth Thrust on Twitter.
If you have a question for us to explore on the workshop, submit it to either
Twitter at Luke_lafr or just in the comments down
below this video.
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to learn more. So, I watched a bunch of different YouTube videos of people
building their rigs and looked at a bunch of different build logs to try to
accumulate all the different ways that someone may or may not apply thermal
paste. So we can try all of them. The first and most common was the P method
or the dot method. Then we had the line. Then there was uh plastering it out or
spreading it around. Then there was adding way too much in whatever way you
managed to do that or way too little. Then there was the medium line where you
just do kind of a short line which I like to call the extended P. Or there's
the spiral. Or there's putting a bunch on and then putting a little plastic bag
over your finger and pushing it around.
So, we'll see if there's any difference or how big that difference is. All
right, guys. So, last time we had a workshop episode. I made a straw poll
about uh asking you guys what power supply you thought would perform the
best. This time, we're going to have two straw polls. Which thermal paste
application solution do you think is the best? And which thermal paste
application solution do you think will be the worst? Vote before you see any of
the results. Don't cheat. That's super lame. Just vote on what one you think is
going to win and then watch the video. First method we're going to try is the
dot or the P. That should probably be fine. A
pretty good rule of thumb is just look at the size of the top of the capacitors
near it. If you're around that size, you're probably good. Okay, so the dot
method has been applied. I grabbed a thermometer here to check the ambient
temperatures that are in the room and going into the case. So, I'm going to load up ID to 64, run a system stability
test on just the CPU. We will then wait
10 minutes, take a temperature reading on the ambient temperature, then take a
temperature reading on the CPU. So, the temperature that ID 64 is giving me is
about 47°, and the temperature that the ambient is in the room or the warehouse
right now is 16.8°. Next up, we're going to try the
line. The line is the next most common one. And the theory with the line is
that you want to go over top of all the things that are under the IHS or the
little metal plate there. So, as you can see from the dot, we got a nice kind of
circular pattern and it covered everything on the CPU without going way
too far out. Okay. So, yet again, we're just cleaning everything off with
isopropyl alcohol. And then we will try the line method. So, I'm going to try to
have the line be pretty thin, especially because this is really thick thermal
paste that I'm using. Here we go. So,
let's get the cooler on. So the line method also produced a temperature of
47° the exact same as the dot method and
the ambient temperatures in the room are exactly 17° which is2° higher than the
previous one. So basically everything's the same. You can see with the line
method it actually kind of sort of looks like a circle like we got from the
previous method. The dot or the P. That's just cuz of like even pressure
from the cooler. a lot of them are going to somewhat look the same. I don't know,
maybe that's the conclusion, but we'll figure that out later on. So, our next
method is going to be the X. I have never done this one personally, so to
anyone that does the X. Sorry if I do it
wrong. I don't know. That looks like a lot of thermal paste to me. Not really a
fan of the X. So the X method resulted in a temperature of
47 with an ambient of
17.2. So the temperature read out by the
computer has not gone up by one and the ambient has not gone up by one.
So yeah, time to try some other stuff. I
think I'm going to skip the medium line one. As we saw, the dot and the line and
the X were all basically identical. So, we'll try
this spiral and then we'll do some other
crazy ones after that. Oh, wow. It's not really
working. Um, no one called me an artist. So, for
the weird, awkward, horrible application method of a spiral in terms of thermal
paste, we landed with 47° C with an
average room temperature of 17.2.
So, exactly the same as the X method and
functionally the same as every other one.
So, time to move on, I guess. Next up, we're going to try
too little. So, adding not enough thermal paste at all finally gave us a
different result of 54° read out by IDA 64. The thermometer
is still reading 17.2, too. So, the ambient is the same, meaning yes, your
temperature goes a bit higher if you don't add enough thermal paste at all.
Okay, let's move on and try too much thermal paste. Warning, if you're doing
this all on your own, you want to make sure that you're not adding way too much
thermal paste because if it squishes out and goes onto your board or goes
anywhere else, it might conduct and short things out. Uh, too little thermal
paste gave us a number that was higher. So hopefully way too much gives us a
number that's higher too because I kind of think it will. And if it doesn't, I
would feel a little silly. I was wrong. It's 47° read out by I to 64 and 17.3°
ambient, which is effectively the same as basically all the other tests that
we've had. I expected this would be more because we have been told less is more
in terms of thermal paste application since forever. And even though we didn't
get that result, I'm actually going to stand by that. If you had a conductive
thermal paste, you wouldn't want it to be splooshing out so much. On the CPU,
the thermal paste coverage actually isn't too bad, which is probably why the
result ended up being pretty good. But as you can see from the block, there is
a ton of extra thermal paste gooping mainly over the sides. So, we had too
much, but I guess it wasn't like absolutely excessively too much to the
point where it's actually spilling onto the board. Okay, so now I'm going to try
to spread it around with like a card or whatever. I don't know how well this is
going to work, especially with Icy Diamond. Wow, Icy Diamond doesn't really
like to spread. I'm just going to try to squish it out onto my
finger. Okay, so I was going to do two spread
out tests. one where I uh spread it out with a card and one where I spread it
out with a my finger through a plastic bag. But I guess I just am going to have
a bunch of thermal paste on me and we're going to combine both of those tests
into just spread it out with your finger. Okay, so this is the last test.
I kind of think the results going to be 47°.
It got 47° out of IDA 64 and 17.3°
ambient. So, the conclusion, I guess,
is just don't use way too much,
especially if you have conductive, and don't use way too little, and you're
probably fine. I think the easiest one to do would probably be the line or the
P method. Uh, other than that, it's really not a
big deal. I don't really know what else to say. I guess that's actually a pretty
good conclusion for a workshop episode. That's what makes these things fun.
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crunchyroll.com/Linus and check them out. Thank you for submitting this
question. If you guys have other questions, let me know at Twitter, Luke
AFR, in the comments down below down there. That'd be cool, too. Thanks for
watching this episode of the workshop. I wonder how many people are going to be
pissed cuz they've been trumping around forever that you have to do it this
specific way and doesn't really seem to be that way at all. Or how many people
are going to tell me I did the test wrong? That'll be interesting, too. We'll see that later on. Anyways, if you
enjoyed the video, like it. If you just hated it cuz I screwed everything up,
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