Got thermal paste in the socket, how bad is it?

[Fasauceome]

Will attach a picture soon, but the amount of paste in the socket is seemingly minimal.

 

My main question is, what are the symptoms of paste in the socket? The PC I'm working on is having blue screen after blue screen, wondering if that's the cause.

 

Motherboard:

B450 gaming plus

Paste:

Arctic MX-4

[xhackforeverxdx]

4 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Metallic based conductive or non conductive? Ceramic?

If its non conductive and not touching the tops of the pins then its not an issue.

If its conductive it could be shorting pins which would 100% be causing bluescreens if not other issues.

Even if its not conductive if it blocks the connection of 1/2 pins u can have bluescreens etc 

[Fasauceome]

5 minutes ago, James Evens said:

You need to clean it. Intel or AMD?

 

5 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Metallic based conductive or non conductive? Ceramic?

Updated

 

Just now, xhackforeverxdx said:

Even if its not conductive if it blocks the connection of 1/2 pins u can have bluescreens etc 

Kind of what I had in mind. Possibly something memory related or chipset related because it's messing with windows so much, throwing faulty software errors.

[xhackforeverxdx]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

 

Updated

 

Kind of what I had in mind. Possibly something memory related or chipset related because it's messing with windows so much, throwing faulty software errors.

Maybe try to get it out really carful with some 99% IPA 

[Fasauceome]

3 minutes ago, xhackforeverxdx said:

Maybe try to get it out really carful with some 99% IPA 

 

2 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Oof, you got it in a PGA socket.

Non conductive so that isnt an issue, but its gonna be a nightmare to clean it out of there and that definitely could be causing problems with electrical continuity between the processor pins and the socket.

Best i can suggest is a squeeze bottle or syringe of some kind + denatured alcohol.

If you have very fine sponge, like those little makeup foundation applicator wedges, you can try a tiny bit of that in a loop of thin wire to clean down the holes.

Used my handy dandy isopropyl and small dental pick to get some out, my small cleaning job didn't do much visibly though. The syringe is a good idea, I have one on hand.

 

Although, I've just turned memory speed down from 3200 to 2933 to seemingly great effect, now I'm left wondering if it's just the memory not playing nice with this config.