What are your most unfavorable "noob" disasters or outrageous encounters with thermal paste
Please post them here!
Hmm never used the stuff.
(Joking)
I once ripped quite a few pins off a CPU because the OEM heatsink paste had become cement.
yeah, not my best day...
Back when I was going through my TIM testing phase, I spent a total of roughly $20 on a four-gram tube of Dow Corning TC-5022.
Not exactly a n00b move, and certainly better than damaging components with a stupid act, but that is $20 I'll never see again.
so did it just suck or something?
No just $20 for 3.5g of 4.0 W/m-K thermal compound
Yeah, it was mostly the cost. The performance wasn't terrible, although not as good as Arctic Cooling MX-4, or Arctic Silver 5.
Dow Corning TC-5121, however, worked great
Other then pulling a few AMD CPU's out of there socket. I don't think i ever had a problem.
Relevant and funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnyoJtv9Cx0
That's fantastic.
i heard this one along the grapevine from a few friends i used to work with actually theres 2 disasters by the same tech how he got hired and hasn't been fired yet bewilders me. neither disaster is related directly to thermal compound
Disaster 1: in a dual CPU based server inserting both CPUs upside down ,clamped it , he used way too much thermal compound and then screwed down the heatsinks, then wondered why the server wasn't working.
Disaster 2: he inserted everything correctly and used the correct amount of compound.... but he mounted the heatsinks sideways so theres basically no cooling when he re-racked the server it naturally over heated and got so hot. it set off thermal alarms in the the servers above and below.
Used it as tooth paste once. Left the plaque and stains and my coffee burned my mouth horribly.
Not really a disaster but a quick fix when you don't have compound at hand. Toothpaste works great as a temporary TIM just don't use that gritty stuff :)
One time I was using paste from Cooler Master on an old build and before I used this I always used Arctic Silver 5 which was a lot thicker than the Cooler Master paste. This lead to me squeezing almost the entire tube out without realizing it until it is too late. Boy was that a tedious clean up.
i made a nice pie in the middle of my cpu.
Then i grabed my Phanteks PH-TC14PE and put it ontop of it. But i forgot to take off the plastic cover from the copper block.. 0_o