Took me 5 years to realize I was putting thermal paste on wrong

I always did the pea method in the center and thought I was doing great. Last month I pulled a cooler off a 3 year old Ryzen and saw the paste barely spread to the edges. A buddy in a Discord server told me to try spreading it thin with a card first. I ran some benchmarks after and my temps dropped 8 degrees. Anyone else find out they were doing something basic wrong for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

sean85410d ago

Built my first PC with toothpaste once. CPU still works!

claire_davis319d ago

That "smelled kinda minty" part got me. I remember back when I was trying to get an old Dell Optiplex working for a friend, I didn't have any thermal paste around so I grabbed a tube of Colgate from the bathroom. It worked fine for about two weeks and then the computer started making weird noises. Turned out the toothpaste had dried out and turned into basically powder, so the heat was building up fast. I cleaned it all off with rubbing alcohol and used proper paste after that, but I still wonder how many office PCs out there are running on Crest right now.

xena_bailey1810d ago

Used toothpaste as thermal paste back in my old Pentium 4 build and it surprisingly worked for months. The whole computer smelled kinda minty whenever it got hot which was actually kind of nice. I ended up swapping it out for real thermal paste when I upgraded the cooler but the CPU still runs fine to this day. Toothpaste is honestly better than nothing if you're in a pinch and just need to test if something posts.