Applying Thermal Paste

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Today, we are going to cover a very basic, yet extremely important process in the art of installing a heatsink to your processor or video card. You may have the biggest, baddest, harriest HSF unit money can buy, but if it is not properly seated to the CPU, you will simply not achieve optimal cooling. A good coating of thermal paste and proper mating of the HSF is key to this process. Below, you will see our list of items for this project.

 

Applying Thermal Paste

 

 

Today, we are going to cover a very basic, yet extremely important process in the art of installing a heatsink to your processor or video card. You may have the biggest, baddest, harriest HSF unit money can buy, but if it is not properly seated to the CPU, you will simply not achieve optimal cooling. A good coating of thermal paste and proper mating of the HSF is key to this process. Below, you will see our list of items for this project. 

 

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• Cotton swabs and alcohol (for cleaning)
  

• A HSF unit of your choice (the bigger the better!)

• Something to mount the unit on. Video chipset, CPU, mobo chipset, etc.

• Thermal paste

• A business card or credit card (once you can throw away afterwards)
  

• One six-pack of your favorite beverage (preferably alcoholic)

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Ok, lets get started. Today, our victim, er, project will be a Visiontek Geforce2 GTS 64megger. Yes, a very nice unit to say the least. The stock cooling fan just did not cut the mustard, so of course it has to come off. I actually had a Tennmax Lasagna unit as well as a blue orb. But once I set the BLORB on the chipset to see how it would look, I instantly decided it MUST be placed on my card. Nuff said. Here is a picture of the chipset before we cleaned it off from a previous attempt at properly applying thermal paste.

 

 

That's the setup. Around the card you see all the useful items we have mentioned with the addition of "canned air". Why do we have that lying around? Well, several reasons, but mostly to blow off any dust that has settled on the card. Here is a close-up of what I am talkin' about.

 

 

I figure if your gonna take the time to pull apart your rig and do this, you may as well do it right! Also, checkout the close-up of the chipset, and see how the previous application of thermal grease has broken down and degraded over time.

 

 

Yeah, it looks like crap. Lets take the cotton swabs and alcohol and clean this bad boy off and see that pretty nVidia logo underneath shall we?

 

 

Nice-n-clean. This clean surface makes for an excellent place to start putting on the grease. Lets head on over to page 2 and see how she comes out.

 

Next: Applying Thermal Paste >>
 

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