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Tried thermal paste on a laptop CPU the cheap way

Used a credit card to spread Arctic Silver on an old Dell Latitude last Tuesday. The temps dropped 12 degrees but now the fan runs constant at idle. Anyone else get worse results spreading it thin like that?
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2 Comments
sammoore
sammoore22d ago
Thicker is better with that stuff. You probably spread it too thin and now there's air gaps making the fan work harder. Try a pea-sized drop in the center and let the heatsink pressure do the spreading next time.
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grace_knight70
Wait, you're saying a pea-sized drop is normal? How do you get it to spread across the whole CPU without just leaving a big glob in the middle?
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