I recently upgraded to a 9800X3D and was seeing temperatures of 75-80°C during gaming. I decided to replace my cooler with a new Phantom Spirit model that has a digital display and used this as an opportunity to reapply the thermal paste. I initially tried the 'buttered toast' method to avoid air pockets, but I'm worried I might have overdone the paste this time. I've shared an image of the application here: https://imgur.com/a/YaCs0f0. After the new cooler installation, my temperatures have dropped by about 10°C under load. Is it possible that I used too much thermal paste?
6 Answers
It's all good! You can technically use too little paste, but too much isn’t really a problem. The only downsides are wasting the paste and maybe making your motherboard look a bit messy. Your temps dropping 10°C is really solid!
There’s really no such thing as too much thermal paste unless it's conductive. As long as your cooler is secured properly, any excess will just ooze out harmlessly.
Your application looks good! If you've secured the cooler well, any extra paste will be fine and won't harm your CPU.
Looks fine to me. If there’s too much paste, it’ll just squeeze out the sides. I like to spread it out a bit more to cover the heat spreader, but it's not a big deal either way.
It's okay, but for even coverage, consider doing an X pattern next time instead of a dot. It helps ensure proper spreading.
I personally think doing a dot is not the best choice, but it works for you! What makes it a bad idea? I’ve always heard the pea dot method is effective.
I’m curious about that too! I thought the dot method was reliable.
Thanks for that! Yeah, I’m happy with the lower temps. I don't get why someone mentioned it’s a bad idea to use a dot like that.