How thermal paste spreads.
 

I saw this on another forum and ripped it off. It's a pretty good demonstration.

How thermal paste spreads

Pretty nice Duke, what method you use guys?

The 'Spread Method' he showed is a bit flawed because he slightly pull the glass up letting the air in.

I use the spread after pre-heating the paste on top of the cpu IHS (+50c), then spreading w/ a credit card, then pre-heat the pot and install... The stuff 'melts' and gets very easy to glue/spread evenly pushing excess way.

Good illustration there, nice post :D

I saw in some you tube type demo, that I think was for AMD, where they laid the TIM in lines that criss crossed the cpu like a star. One line vertically in the middle, one line centered horizontally, and then one line for each end to opposite end.

Found it works pretty well since a couple of 90 degree turns of the pot will give you a very nice coating of the entire cpu and pot, just don't get carried away on the amount of tim you put into each line rofl.

Then I run w/o and LN2 until I reach about 60C and shut down. A few minutes later I'll start pouring small amounts of LN2 as I restart the computer.

Seems to work for me

I just the dot method ... no time to dick around ...

I use a bigger dot ............ LOL

I've seen that video.

All that wiggling back and forth screws up an eraser seal and can incorporate eraser into your TIM.

I started using a star with i7, and especially with gulftown. A dot is fine for GPU's and 775's.

:ohcrap:

I use the Dot and a small wiggle. I always have.

I pay as I go...hate using credit cards for cpu's. :taunt:

^ 757 Credit rating ............ :)