Shoutout to the retired IT guy who set me straight on thermal paste

I was swapping a CPU on a Dell Optiplex last week and this old timer walked by my bench. He saw I was about to use the pea method and just said 'you're wasting paste on those direct die chips.' He showed me how the older Xeons need a thin spread instead because of the heatspreader gap. I tried it his way and my temps dropped by 8 degrees C on load. Has anyone else found that the application method really changes based on the chip generation?

3 comments

3 Comments

campbell.tara27d ago

oh yeah totally, the older xeons and even some of those dell optiplex boards have that weird gap where the ihs doesn't sit flush. i started doing a thin hand spread on all the lga 2011 and older stuff after i saw a similar drop. the pea method is great for modern consumer chips but it's not universal at all.

keithbennett15d ago

Wait, is that actually a known thing with the LGA 2011 stuff? I always just did the pea method and figured it was fine, but now I'm wondering if I've been leaving gaps this whole time lol. Definitely gonna start spreading thin on the older chips after reading this.

black.joel27d ago

I started using a credit card to spread it thin after killing a 2670 v2 that way.