Thermaltake wants to revolutionize the way how you apply Thermal Paste

[Bombastinator]

14 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

An attempt was made. Can't always get it right with the first prototype but it doesn't help that the paste I had available to waste was incredibly soupy.

 

Lot of blank space in that stencil.  I would assume it would want to be a square not an oval and there would want to be holes in the negative space.  Also thickness of the tape combined with positive (cut out) space determines Volume of paste application.  My understanding is there is a lot of upper limit slop in this number. So providing it meets a minimum amount of paste, more shouldn’t matter much.  I think, anyway.

[Windows7ge]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Lot of blank space in that stencil.  I would assume it would want to be a square not an oval and there would want to be holes in the negative space.  Also thickness of the tape combined with positive (cut out) space determines Volume of paste application.  My understanding is there is a lot of upper limit slop in this number. So providing it meets a minimum amount of paste, more shouldn’t matter much.  I think, anyway.

It's a circle not an oval but eh close enough. I made it 0.4mm thick and it was to be more of a joke than anything practical. I could drop the thickness to 0.3 or 0.2 to reduce the amount of paste but at the end of the day the only paste I had did it's job too well of spreading out.

 

I did go all the way and mounted a waterblock to it. It spread fine. I believe with the right thickness of stencil the LTT logo would actually make a fine applicator if the stencil itself wasn't such a huge waste of paste. I don't believe making additional holes in the negative space would be necessary.

[Windows7ge]

5 hours ago, X-System said:

Try with Grizzly Hydronaut. It will work for sure because the paste isn't liquid like your paste

If somebody's willing to cover the cost of the paste I'll give this another go.

[Bombastinator]

26 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

It's a circle not an oval but eh close enough. I made it 0.4mm thick and it was to be more of a joke than anything practical. I could drop the thickness to 0.3 or 0.2 to reduce the amount of paste but at the end of the day the only paste I had did it's job too well of spreading out.

 

I did go all the way and mounted a waterblock to it. It spread fine. I believe with the right thickness of stencil the LTT logo would actually make a fine applicator if the stencil itself wasn't such a huge waste of paste. I don't believe making additional holes in the negative space would be necessary.

It’s a sort of Ryan Reynolds streaming platform kind of joke though.  Funny but may arguably also have value aside from making fun of a concept. If these stencils become popular anyone can do one.  Most flexographic presses won’t have any trouble with a die cut.  You just provide a vector file for the cuts and they lay down what amounts to uncut disposable razor blade material on a sheet of rubber. Stuff looks like razor wire a little. Comes in spools. They treat it just like a color.  Other press types could probably do it too.  I’ve only ever seen the flexographic one. One color flexographic presses are all over the place.  Anywhere there’s a black and white newspaper printed.  Cheap, as custom printing goes.

[Just Monika]

I think a more efficient method would be a self-inking stamp type of tool that dispensed thermal paste instead of ink. Cut out the wasted paste and the messing-around with a stencil and paste tube, and just stamp on the paste.

 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

31 minutes ago, Just Monika said:

I think a more efficient method would be a self-inking stamp type of tool that dispensed thermal paste instead of ink. Cut out the wasted paste and the messing-around with a stencil and paste tube, and just stamp on the paste.

 

 

 

Thermal paste doesn’t behave like stamp ink though. Very watery stuff.  More watery than water even.  There are inks it does behave like though.  Press ink comes to mind. Thick paste. Might be something there.  Someone mentioned paste antiperspirant systems as well.  The one that comes to mind for me is Mitchum.  The end seems to be that paste measurement doesn’t really matter nearly as much as people think it does as long as it is below above a minimum.  Doesn’t stop people from worrying though.

[DeScruff]

Heres a million dollar idea (okay maybe not million dollars...)
Make a tube that just "clicks" like a pen and dispenses ~a grain of rice amount. Useful for beginners and advanced users alike. No need to guess how viscus the paste is and develop a feel for how much pressure to apply to the plunger (don't wanna shoot a whole bunch out ya know?)

Just *click* and there ya go, that should be enough.
For Threadripper click a 3x3 grid.... or something.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 minute ago, DeScruff said:

Heres a million dollar idea (okay maybe not million dollars...)
Make a tube that just "clicks" like a pen and dispenses ~a grain of rice amount. Useful for beginners and advanced users alike. No need to guess how viscus the paste is and develop a feel for how much pressure to apply to the plunger (don't wanna shoot a whole bunch out ya know?)

Just *click* and there ya go, that should be enough.
For Threadripper click a 3x3 grid.... or something.

Cool, but threadripper is a 3x6 or 6x12 grid.

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, TheTechWizardThatNeedsHelp said:

Cool, but threadripper is a 3x6 or 6x12 grid.

So make it a setting thing.  Could even have different settings for different chip designs based on surface area.  There would be the standard intel setting the am4 setting the threadripper setting, etc..

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Maybe a head that is a square or rectangle depending on what you need. Or sell a different pen with a different head. 

[vortextech77]

It's just to make you buy more thermal paste. It doesn't take much effort to put it on normally anyway.

[shaz2sxy]

I remember when I first started building PC's i used to spread it out with an old card making sure it was flat and fully covered.  making sure it was not too thick and not too thin.

 

now I just do the pea method and bish bosh bash its done lol

[NumLock21]

Thermaltake must be targeting those 1st time PC builders with this crap.

FYI, hexagonal shape thermal paste will not let you OC your CPU highers, gain more FPS, or make you a better gamer.

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Thermaltake must be targeting those 1st time PC builders with this crap.

FYI, hexagonal shape thermal paste will not let you OC your CPU highers, gain more FPS, or make you a better gamer.

Are they targeting first time builders? Undoubtedly.  Everyone was a first time builder once though. 

will it do nothing to help?  In reality correct.  Nothing at all.  They seem to be targeting perception rather than reality though.  A marketing thing.  Like RGB making your computer go faster. 

[NumLock21]

5 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Are they targeting first time builders? Undoubtedly.  Everyone was a first time builder once though. 

will it do nothing to help?  In reality correct.  Nothing at all.  They seem to be targeting perception rather than reality though.  A marketing thing.  Like RGB making your computer go faster. 

The application may help if it does not waste thermal paste and designed with function over form, like how it's pre-applied at the factory.

 

[Bombastinator]

12 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

The application may help if it does not waste thermal paste and designed with function over form, like how it's pre-applied at the factory.

 

One of the major criticisms is that the home template (as opposed to the factory template) does waste thermal paste.

 

re: comparing factory video to home use

Spoiler

A silkscreen is really just a kind of stencil.  The process was actually developed from stenciling. It requires a very thin material to be used though. Part of the issue with factory vs home, is the factory system makes thousands of devices a day whereas a home user does maybe one or two every few years. The stencil method in the factory wastes less money because of volume. A silkscreen has to be “filled” for one thing. So there’s effectively double the thermal paste right there. They do thousands a day though so the fill gets merely put on the next cooler in line and with a thousand coolers, that 1 cooler worth of waste is divided by a thousand.  More efficient. If they were doing only one cooler a day the silkscreen method would be vastly more wasteful.  The template method less so.  It requires a jig that I would guesstimate cost at least $50 and maybe more than $100 to make.  It gets users thousands and thousands of times though so in a factory environment cost is negligible.   In a DIY environment the cost would be immense.