Thermal paste on CPU die.

[Sharpman85]

Hi All,

 

I have a question which has been nagging me for some time as I am very pedantic, OCD even about my PC, I would like to know you opinion on having to clean a CPU thoroughly from thermal paste. Some got on the CPU die as seen below (I can get better photos later) and I am wondering whether I have to clean them. I'ts not the IHS so it's not isolated and I'm afraid that it will cause problems later on. It was thermal paste included with a be quiet! Dark Rock Slim CPU cooler and I apparently applied too much paste. Support said that it's not electrically conductive and it's a "standard" thermal paste, but since they could not provide any other details I don't know whether to believe them even though most thermal pastes are silicon-based and should not be conductive or capacitive (hold or build a charge over time). I haven't had much time to test it but I got 4.8 GHz when gaming (I assume that 4.9 can be achieved only when benchmarking or never as the OS is also using the CPU in the background) and do not want to go through the process of returning just because my OCD kicked-in..

 

I understand that it can be a stupid question for some, but I have my quirks..

 

I did not get to test it thoroughly though, even whether it can hit 4,9 and I do not plan to overclock for some time.

 

[Jurrunio]

the blue bit? Clean them if you can. but you dont have to. The cooler only connects to the top of the IHS anyway

 

If you're talking about the black bit, that's the glue/adhesive sticking the IHS to the PCB.

[Spotty]

9 minutes ago, Sharpman85 said:

Some got on the CPU die as seen below

That's not the CPU die. That's the substrate. CPU die is entirely covered by the IHS.

Doesn't matter if there's thermal paste on the substrate or even on the die. There's already thermal paste on the CPU die for contact between the die itself and the IHS.

 

11 minutes ago, Sharpman85 said:

Support said that it's not thermally conductive and it's a "standard" thermal paste

Do you mean electrically conductive? Thermal paste is by design thermally conductive.

Even if it was electrically conductive it wouldn't matter since it's on the top of the CPU, not on the bottom where the pins make contact with the socket.

 

And as @Jurrunio pointed out what you circled in the photos appears to be the glue holding the IHS to the substrate.

[Arika]

19 minutes ago, Sharpman85 said:

Support said that it's not thermally conductive

i certainly hope they didn't say that, otherwise they should not be making thermal paste, hell, or even cpu coolers for that matter

[Sharpman85]

 

1 hour ago, Jurrunio said:

the blue bit? Clean them if you can. but you dont have to. The cooler only connects to the top of the IHS anyway

 

If you're talking about the black bit, that's the glue/adhesive sticking the IHS to the PCB.

 

52 minutes ago, Arika S said:

i certainly hope they didn't say that, otherwise they should not be making thermal paste, hell, or even cpu coolers for that matter

 

Yes, I meant electrically conductive, it was a typo. I will try to clean it if I can then. I mean the blue blobs, I know that the black one is the adhesive, but I've seen on delidding videos and it seemed that there was a gap at around that area where something might get in, but I may be overreacting.

 

57 minutes ago, Spotty said:

That's not the CPU die. That's the substrate. CPU die is entirely covered by the IHS.

Doesn't matter if there's thermal paste on the substrate or even on the die. There's already thermal paste on the CPU die for contact between the die itself and the IHS.

 

Do you mean electrically conductive? Thermal paste is by design thermally conductive.

Even if it was electrically conductive it wouldn't matter since it's on the top of the CPU, not on the bottom where the pins make contact with the socket.

 

And as @Jurrunio pointed out what you circled in the photos appears to be the glue holding the IHS to the substrate.

In the 9600, 9700K and 9900K they used solder, so no thermal paste inside this time.

 

So to sum up, I can just leave it there? What about if the paste was electrically conductive? I don't mean Conductonaut but a paste like Arctic Silver 5 or similar?

[Mick Naughty]

Since when is arctic paste conductive?

 

clean it or leave it. There’s nothing there for the paste to mess up. 

[Lowbuget]

@Sharpman85 try and use some q-tips to get it,but make sure no cotten is left on the cpu(I feel like i should not have to say this but some people out there)but anyways thats what i use and i never have any problems

[Sharpman85]

I’ve added a better photo. As you can see there is some left on the IHS, but that can be easily removed, the parts that concern me are at the front and on the substrate.

Does anyone know what are the golden dots? Contacts of some sort? I assume that paste on them could cause some problems, right?

[Zando_]

3 minutes ago, Sharpman85 said:

I’ve added a better photo. As you can see there is some left on the IHS, but that can be easily removed, the parts that concern me are at the front and on the substrate.

Does anyone know what are the golden dots? Contacts of some sort? I assume that paste on them could cause some problems, right?

-snip-

If you used standard non-conductive paste there's no problems. Hell you could dump a tablespoon of paste into the socket itself, the only issue would be it will act like an insulator, not letting the pins make contact. It wouldn't technically break anything though, if you could then clean out the socket afterwards without bending any pins it'd be fine. Could bathe your CPU in a bucket of the stuff, it legit can't hurt anything unless it just blocks a contact somewhere. 

Basically non-conductive paste can only "hurt" your rig by not letting something make contact where it needs to, it can't short-circuit anything. 

The only necessary contacts for your CPU are on the bottom, so long as that and the socket pins are clean, you're fine. 

[Mister Woof]

 

[Sharpman85]

2 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

If you used standard non-conductive paste there's no problems. Hell you could dump a tablespoon of paste into the socket itself, the only issue would be it will act like an insulator, not letting the pins make contact. It wouldn't technically break anything though, if you could then clean out the socket afterwards without bending any pins it'd be fine. Could bathe your CPU in a bucket of the stuff, it legit can't hurt anything unless it just blocks a contact somewhere. 

Basically non-conductive paste can only "hurt" your rig by not letting something make contact where it needs to, it can't short-circuit anything. 

The only necessary contacts for your CPU are on the bottom, so long as that and the socket pins are clean, you're fine. 

The problem is I do not know whether it’s conductive or not, it came with the be quiet! Dark Rock Slim cooler, had I used Arctic MX-4 I would not worry, but I have no way of finding out now as support could only tell me that the paste is safe as the one used on computer parts is nonconductive, but they did not know any details. 

[Mick Naughty]

More than enough detail. The spot it’s at isn’t gonna do anything. Been mentioned several times, no issue what so ever. 

[Sharpman85]

7 minutes ago, Mick Naughty said:

More than enough detail. The spot it’s at isn’t gonna do anything. Been mentioned several times, no issue what so ever. 

Ok, I will try using a q-tip later to remove just for aesthetics sake.

 

BTW. When I was using Arctic Silver 5 I've read that it can be conductive due to metal compounds or something like that. Nothing like liquid metal, but still. I've used it on a bare laptop CPU and GPU die for 5+ years and nothing happened though.

[Falkentyne]

2 hours ago, Plutosaurus said:

 

Funniest thing I've seen in awhile.  Thanks!