Ugly!

By: Ross 'Tweakmonster' Wenger, Jun.2002

Most of us who have used thermal pastes for a while now know that between both time, and numerous applications, it can end up spreading from the CPU core to the surrounding areas of the die like a fungus. This left-over residual paste can be quite a task to get cleaned off, to say the least, and will only get worse over time if not removed periodically.

After experimenting with several ways of trying remove this leftover thermal paste easily, I have settled on a quick and painless method that will leave your CPU clean and shiney as new in about a minute or two.

"Why would this matter", you ask? Well, I have two reasons for you:

1) The more popular thermal pastes on the market these days contain Silver particles which aid in heat transfer because Silver is an excellent thermal conductor. The flip side to this coin is the fact that Silver also conducts electricity just as well, and you can imagine what may happen if any of the bridges or interconnects around the CPU core were to get coated with this conductive paste and create an electrical pathway to another bridge or interconnect. Not good any way you look at it.

2) It plain looks like crap when your kick-ass AMD CPU is covered in old, used thermal paste, and it is messy as hell. Always remember.....pretty is faster!

Let's get started. First, gather what we will need:

B-12 Chemtool is a brand of carburetor spray cleaner that is available at just about any automotive supply store here in the USA. It evaporates almost immediately when applied, and leaves no residue behind. Perfect for what we want to accomplish!

Other brands of carburetor cleaner would work just as well, but this is one brand I KNOW does an excellent job. Just be sure the brand you decide to use is not one that contains an added lubricant. Some do, and that could not be good. After all, we are trying to completely clean the CPU, not lubricate it!

The picture on the right shows one of my most commonly used and versatile computer cleaning tools.....the Q-tip (also known as a cotton swab). As far as I'm concerned, no tweaker's toolbox is complete without some of these.

Now that we have all that we need to do this, lets find a CPU to clean!