Enough of our users on the forum have reported better temps with the "3 dots" method. Do a better job than I did for the video though. Even though "looks wise" I rolled about a 3 on that paste job, that pase job allowed the 3800x to boost up to 4525 on the ASRock X570 Creator.
Looks like I’m going to need to buy more thermal paste. I used up all I had with my last heatsink seating.
Hmm seems like i need to get rid of that stock cooler from the 3600 and upgrade to something decent from beQuiet and redo the thermalpaste.
I really appreciate you going into such detail on seemingly minor things like thermalpaste application. Thank you very much.
I plan to try out the thermal grizzly carbonaut pad with my 3700x eventually.
those generally perform worse than traditional thermal paste but the caveat is they dont ‘degrade’ over time.
The thermal grizzly one is supposed to better than the IC graphite pad…
I have the IC pad, and on non over clocked systems I have used it with it does the same as my artic silver 5 paste.
I’ve used it with a 8700, 9600k, and briefly with my 3700x. I just leave them stock, I don’t chase after the 3-5%
You Jackson Pollocked the shit out of that mate.
GD900 is pretty good for chinesium paste and actually came out on top when Brian from techYEScity did a comparison to reputable brands
I bought a 30G tub for like a buck after a coupon on AliExpress
I would go with the syringe instead of the tub though
@NeOZeN
Googled that, was a good chuckle
As a follow-up to this – why might the spread method not be desirable?
If your CPU has a concave ihs (or your cooler for that matter) it is possible to spread the Tim too thin.
On stock wraith prism coolers it is pretty thick and the bottom of the cooler isn’t super even.
On the h115i pro I discovered the preinstalled thermal paste was too thin to contact the CPU (or even spread out much) on the 3700x:
The ring in this photo is from the preinstalled paste on the Corsair h115i pro. It didn’t even make good contact in the middle. The marks are from me using a dial micrometer and a set of machinists parallels to find out how concave the ihs is.
The ihs was somewhat concave and the h115i was somewhat concave.
If you spread the Tim out as thin as the Corsair preinstalled paste, your paste might not fully contact… and just get a ring as I did.
Curiously the cooling capacity of this ring was not completely awful. But boosts were limited to around 3.9-4.0ghz after more than a few seconds.
It’s possible to even see the non flatness with a bright light behind the machinsts parallels which are 1/8th inch thick.
Both the h115i coldplate and the ihs are a bit concave so the problems a bit worse than it would otherwise be.
If you do spread instead of dot, make sure the layer is about as thick as the layer on stock AMD coolers.
3 dots seems to really help air coolers. My Cryorig C7 Cu is already at max performance with the 3 dots method.
Water coolers seem to need a larger coldplate in combination with the dots method, like the Enermax Liqtech II that’s AM4 compatible.
does lapping void the warranty?
