Can we make DIY Thermal Paste??
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
3,812 words · ~19 min read
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i'm not totally sure how many people
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would recommend this but uh all of us pc building tech dweebs
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already know about thermal paste okay aka the hot stuff aka the gray goo aka
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grammy's old sandwich spread what but
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what if you're out of thermal paste yeah you could just go order more pick some
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up from ncix or you could make your own Linus actually
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got an email from a fan suggesting we do this so in this video we are going back
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to chemistry class and finding out whether any of these materials can work
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as a thermal paste substitute because Linus isn't here and he can't stop us
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but i do have alex here to make sure that i don't uh blow up this pc with
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nutella because that that's a real possibility
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what
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the hex gears impulse mechanical keyboard has RGB lighting a variety of
1:02
different key switches and ip56 water resistance so it can survive some of
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your worst spills use offer code LTT to save ten dollars at the link below as
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alex could tell you but i will instead the there's two main things [ __ ]
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guys i'm not Linus you'll get there
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sadly okay so the main purpose of thermal
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paste is to assist the heat transfer between the CPU and the heat sink when
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you put them together because you put them together but there's still a little bit of gaps in between
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so what do we need thermal paste to do what are the two main qualifications
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we're looking for so i guess the first one is that it needs to be really easily
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spreadable so like you have all those little dips and stuff
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and you want to just fill those in you don't want to be creating like a layer
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between your CPU and your heatsink right and the other thing is that it has to be
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really good thermally conductive so you don't have just like
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a bunch of resistance between the two you want that heat to be transferred
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yeah okay so with those qualifications there are a large number of materials
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that we could potentially use with
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varying efficiencies so so what do we have here
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okay so some of you might be familiar with this toothpaste a lot of people
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have tried it and we're not going to try it by itself today because it's been
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tried a lot but it's actually a surprisingly effective substitute the
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problem is that it's got fluoride in it and that means it's slightly corrosive
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and it also tends to dry out very easily
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so what we're gonna mix it with thanks to some tips on the internet is
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petroleum jelly aka vaseline uh but this
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is the no-name brand because really bad stuff and why is it bad it's chunky oh
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that's true but if we mix it together i don't know i mean this is a smooth type
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of toothpaste because the main thing when you're using toothpaste you don't want the the gritty kind with like the
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little beads in it or whatever we'll just do it should we just do it yeah i
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want to just do it okay um uh you could oh dear
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yes maybe i feel like that's slightly dangerous
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why you're a monster alex what CPU is this also uh that's a 7980xc
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jesus so maybe we don't want to get toothpaste alex like a 2 000 processor
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you're supposed to rain me in i'm not supposed to rain you in what are we
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doing here ah i don't know this seems to be working
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okay like i don't think it's the way that you thought that you know that's
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true well i think we're about good like okay yeah you want to try it like that
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yep the wrong way all right well
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you've made your bed and now we're gonna lie in it i guess so i'm guessing that
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you've already done the testing i ran a baseline with real thermal paste
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and i also ran it bareback as they say did
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you find a board that doesn't have a power button on it no it has a power
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button ready
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whoa it's on it works
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yes
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so we just gotta boot it up and then run ida 64
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a little bit and stress test it and see whether uh
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the computer will explode that's how we know right yeah yeah
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all right i had a 64. um where do we have the wait it should come up
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automatically because i'm a pr i'm a programmer i'm a big
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big tech hacker look at that oh geez wow that's fancy see that's what the
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toothpaste does oh that's pretty good uh like 20 degrees
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idling very nice um what was our baseline head over to
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documents bareback and baseline so baseline we're
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looking at a max of what 65 degrees package got up to 70 hottest core 65
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bareback we are looking at 104 degrees
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yep that's not great yeah when i did the bareback it just shot right up past 100
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so so let's see here
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toothpaste and vaseline is looking um
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actually not bad your CPU package is already at 68. uh hottest core okay so
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we're at 65 already so we're not beating thermal pace that is for sure things go
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real slow when you're stress testing the CPU that's what i learned
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and which i already know that's only like five degrees over like
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actual thermal paste though so it's a way better option than just not
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having anything that's very true so if you're like really in a bind you're like
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i gotta get my old my dad's old dell from when i was a small child up and
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running immediately right now
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not bad not horrible one of them got up to 79. that's too hot i wouldn't go
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outside if it was that hot so that one was kind of a joke all right
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guys but this next one actually might work as a real substitute
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because what we're using is silicon grease o-ring lube
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it's what o-ring lube it's o-ring lube and that's not something dirty it's just
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things that you use for o-rings yeah yeah
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so we're actually combining silicon grease with
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drum roll please
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diamond powder cool i didn't even know that was a thing
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but it is so we're basically using the diamond as the
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thermal conductor and the silicone grease as the medium
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for that uh material we're not just throwing this on okay
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we're gonna mix it properly this is a science this is a science laboratory and
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i won't stand for your nonsense so before if you're gonna deal
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with diamond powder at all guys we need
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masks all right and i'm really glad that
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alex brought that up yeah let's do that
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i would have remembered about the masks okay
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yeah after you started coughing
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so this is what zero to one don't open it yet don't open it yet zero to one
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micron diamond powder i guess this is traditionally used for like polishing
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mirrors oh it's 25 carats 25 carat
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oh okay so the ratio we're supposed to use
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is around 60 40. whatever that means um
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i'm just gonna eyeball it then yep
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papa alex so is this kind of just like making icy
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diamond like i see diamond has diamonds in it right yeah and it kind of looks
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like it too do you think we need more grease in there yeah maybe a bit should
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i be wearing gloves that's probably fine got some icy
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diamond for comparison oh wow
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that's dark yeah this is a lot thicker than other
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thermal pastes so how much did this diamond powder cost for that package it
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was like 15 bucks or something oh this
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is also a super weird application well you're taking your mask off
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yeah what are you doing the dust isn't around anymore we're good oh no science
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class is not in session anymore well except for the science we're doing right
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here yeah except yeah except for those yeah we do what we must because we can
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that is a proverb and a half right there
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all right so idle looking like 30 degrees that feels like
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it's higher than what it was last time but uh the diamond powder and the
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silicone grease is uh this is a little bit more of a practical uh alternative
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you're not just like trying to get something up and running right away you're like you know what screw the
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system i'm making my own thermal paste i'm growing my own tomatoes in my
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backyard that's that's what that's who this is for yeah but it's working really
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bad this is like when you when you try and make tomatoes in your backyard and
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then you know the deers eat them and yeah and
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it ends up that you weren't even growing tomatoes the whole time they were like it was actually weed
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yeah all right so this here is my idea we've
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got some rapid tap you want to use rapid tap instead of
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silicon grease yeah okay what if the problem also could be
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that our diamonds are just too big and we need smaller ones
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could you imagine just having like a great big diamond
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in the middle i also don't know if rapid tap is electrically conductive
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it probably is so we definitely will not want to be getting this on anywhere
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that's not the CPU okay i guess we're about to get good to go for this thing
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cool for your your my luby concoction
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this was not endorsed by my internet sources so no guarantees that it will
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perform as well as our homemade diamond paste i think it's gonna be better this
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is actually like how you would use this normally you'd like combine it with an
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oil and then spread it out on like a surface
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plate and polish something
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speaking of which do you want to do that after
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i do what i'm seeing 67 77 i think your diamond
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paste like it's worse than toothpaste and petroleum jelly
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buy quite a bit so don't don't go up buying diamonds just use your freaking
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toothpaste you know diamonds are kind of useless
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like they cost a lot and they don't really do anything except look pretty i thought this would be one functional
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application bye see you later see you later i think mustard is going
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to destroy this oh my gosh um you know
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you put your faith in something and then it just lets you down yeah and then you
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go all the way down hit rock bottom and try mustard
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here we go
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starting the test i see 47 52
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57 58 we're still doing better than the
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diamond at this point 63. so basically
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condiments are way better than diamond powder
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what the hell okay we just had 74 but it's like this
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is usable this is an 18 core processor
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you know what this means we got to build
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a liquid-cooled pc just using condiments well it works so great with concrete so
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yeah i think we can call that basically a win for mustard all right well so it
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seems like anything besides diamond paste as far as uh last
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minute things go not the worst surprisingly
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okay let's move on yep so the thing about nutella it's the only
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stuff here that i kind of want to eat
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way too much
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so that's actually not coming off
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do you get mustard off we need actually like soap
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we've cooked the mustard onto the metal
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now we're gonna now we're in a bit of a pickle what
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okay hold on hold on hold on it's wet dude it's dripping yeah exactly
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because we need to get it off okay but what about this uh
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so let's just kind of pack that around the CPU
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uh alex is supposed to keep me in check for
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this video i find myself stressing out look if we wreck this board it's your
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fault oh that's fine i think it's all good it's only like a little bit of
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water that's around there now and it's basically all gone so yes this is what
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we thought would do better than mustard i'm not
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so confident anymore you know
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being a cameraman is hard work i understand that here you go david yeah
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yeah there you go
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how's that that was weird
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in a university while i was studying for exams one time i just like downed a
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whole bottle of nutella much like i had it there just like with a spoon and then
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um threw up violently and i didn't eat
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nutella for like six or so years after that you do weird things
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nutella addiction is a scourge a scourge it's no joke let's see if
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nutella is really gets results that are just as nutty as it is
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okay uh so we're looking already at 52
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degrees up 60 i see 63 65 71 okay this is not
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gonna be as good as mustard so i wasn't really joking when i said we might blow
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up the pc with nutella no it might be worse than diamond paste
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everything is terrible i guess uh sugar and fat content isn't
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everything maybe we should just put a ferrero rocher just like
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right in the middle okay now actually i'm expecting this to
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maybe do okay because it's 40 zinc oxide
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is that good which is the main ingredient in some thermal pastes and
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and i don't know why uh zinc oxide would be helpful to uh baby bums but it might
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be helpful to this baby bum right here
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all right okay
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69.
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not not worse than
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mustard mustard we're one degree off from mustard though
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i think that we might find out that mustard is your best bet
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like mustard is probably better than some budget thermal pastes so this is
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officially worse than mustard for like a few minutes for diaper rash cream yeah
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true it is diaper rash cream and it's not gonna dry out we're only six degrees
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up yeah six degrees isn't too bad i really did not think any of this
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hey what is that you wanna
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whoa that right there is a lapping plate
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this is so heavy what are we gonna do with this solid steel so stick it right
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on top well but like the whole point of thermal paste is to
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fill in the gaps but what if there were no gaps
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yeah much like tender dates everywhere we are going to just try and do it with
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no thermal paste and i didn't say that quite right
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yeah whenever i go on dates and they don't have thermal paste man i'm just
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gone yeah we need just a little bit of this polishing compound polishing compound is
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that like diamond powder yeah diamond powder actually is a polishing compound
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of sorts gonna just throw some rapid tap in here bam do a little stir yeah now we
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just have to put it on the lapping plate and go ham
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very rhythmic you're essentially grinding down the
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surface of the heatsink block yes
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so that it's smooth as a baby's bottom
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smoother even if you want to get the CPU out so we can
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oh so wait you're gonna drag the CPU across that yep that's
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that's the plan i didn't know that adding alex to this video would make it
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more off the walls wow that's turning into just copper now
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all of the protective coating is just leaving
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so i'm going to need to step up to a lower grip but higher cutting power i
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have never done CPU lapping before it is a thing that lots of people do to
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improve performance we aren't doing this to improve performance but uh we're
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doing it to prove that protection is for the weak
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yeah people please don't have that be your takeaway here
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i don't feel amazing about this things weren't quite as flat as i thought that
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they were at the beginning so we've had to take off a lot more material than i
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thought and i'm afraid that we're still quite a ways off of being flat so like
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you can see kind of like here we haven't even touched it with the
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surface plate yet and right there as well so that means that there are really big high spots there and there
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so kind of like around the edges here
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and in the center was a lot higher than like because it would be contacting the
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silicon around here and then right around the die it was higher i'm a bit
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concerned about how much crap i got all over the CPU around like these little
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resistors here i'm not sure how i'm going to get that out on the other edge
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there's like it's just kind of all over the place uh
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i'm not totally sure what to do
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the thing that riley brought me in so that
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things wouldn't be dying like geez this is um
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i'm not totally sure how many people
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would recommend this but uh i certainly wouldn't oh
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jeez louise we have and we haven't even told Linus we're doing this so hopefully
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he was going to come around the corner the thing is that when you use water and
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you like put it all over a processor the water can kind of stick around so you
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want to just dunk it in alcohol first yeah why not and then that shows it away
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and we should be about good to go definitely do that
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i have no doubts that this will work flawlessly good me too
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sometimes you play with a 2 000 processor hopefully you didn't break it
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here we go was this worth
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possibly killing the processor
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we will find out questionable for sure but um was it worth it for the views
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though if we get them most people have turned off the videos yeah everyone's
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gone we got into the BIOS
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yep didn't kill it excellent
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so we're idling at about 20 28 degrees or so um
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which is about the same as last time so we might be able to actually beat like
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nutella or um diamond paste using this
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being 80 oh that's cloud that's climbing fast right that's climbing really fast
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beat the diamond paste
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89 we we still have a little bit of room
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still a little bit 90.
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it's a really similar trajectory to the diamond pace 93.
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see but that's what's that's so surprising like why was the diamond
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paste so bad i don't know because this is bareback
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and it's it's doing very similar this has nothing
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and it's doing very similarly so it's back down to like 93 degrees so
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okay flattening it did help a bit it seems to be better than the diamonds but
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uh so if you want to keep uh under load you know you want to keep it at a nice
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frosty 94 then flattening is yeah it's
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great good to go but i guess if you actually want to keep
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it cool toothpaste and petroleum jelly excellent option yeah diaper rash cream
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also pretty good if you have it around yeah not horrible mustard
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surprising winter but also got toasted
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and surprisingly diamond powder with anything
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not as good as we thought so i see diamond must have some sort of like
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secret you know secret recipe or something yeah
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or it's just way finer than what we had or something
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i don't know at the end of the day you know we found that some materials
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can actually work for a hot minute or minutes
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but on the whole you probably want to use
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thermal paste so if you're if you're really desperate you might turn to
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something else but for the most part just go to the store
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pick up some thermal paste order some thermal paste like 15 bucks on prime
20:31
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21:09
at the link in the description all right guys that's it for this video alex has
21:12
already given up and gone right back to eating nutella if this video sucked you
21:17
know what to do but if it was awesome hit that like button get subscribed and
21:21
click the link in the video's description to check out some of the things we featured in this video i guess
21:26
yeah you could go buy some toothpaste also linked down in the description is
21:30
our merch store so you can buy shirts like this one and other awesome stuff
21:34
and our community forum which you should totally join