100% Isopropyl Alcohol

[Night]

Heyyy guys. Im upgrading tonight from H77 to Z77. I just went to the pharmacy earlier and asked then if thy had isopropyl alcohol. They only had 100%, Is that going to matter? (As opposed to the recommended 99%) Never cleaned a CPU before.

Also in Linus' Techquickie video on thermal paste he doesnt spread it at all. Is it likely that the paste spreads out in one direction and doesnt work aswell?

Should I just spread it myself??

[bennyino]

it should be fine, its better to do the grain of rice method

[gts250ftw]

well no cpus are designed to direct the heat to the centre therefore the tim will spread out as there will be the most pressure at the centre...also 100% should be fine...it may just evaporate quicker and well its harder to make heh

[zip2k4]

I used to use alcohol, had to even resort to baby wipes once - once....

I never actually noticed any difference in the amount of alcohol those contained :o

 

but nowadays, if you don't mind extra expense and the hassle of finding one of these babies - try the arctic silver's arcticlean.

 

really easy to clean with that :)

[Owen]

People just recommend 99% because usually you can't find 100%, because technically you can't have 100% alcohol. 

 

[Night]

People just recommend 99% because usually you can't find 100%, because technically you can't have 100% alcohol.

Lol, But my bottle says 100%. It lied to me?! :O

[Owen]

Lol, But my bottle says 100%. It lied to me?! :o

Yup, it's sorta like false advertising and why you see soap that say "kills 99.9% of bacteria". You can't guarantee that something is 100% something because there could be some shit in it that we don't know about :P

[Wats]

Use coffee filters along with a small amount of alcohol to scrub off TIM. Coffee filters are lint free, not that a lint is going to destroy anything..

[codytappen]

Yeah 100% is fine for cleaning your CPU; 99% is recommended because that's how it's most commonly sold. Also, trust me, the heatsink will spread the thermal paste perfectly, don't worry about spreading it.

[Emkryan]

put a small tiny dot in the middle and let it naturally do it's thing

[toFU]

You guys are lucky.

The highest the stores in my area has is 91%.

[Art Vandelay]

TIM spreads out evenly when you put the heatsink down on it, as long as it is placed down evenly.

[Darell3]

Thats fine. I use 70% xD

[Night]

Thanks everyone who commented. 

[Queek]

The percentage of isopropyl alcohol doesn't matter as long as its mostly isopropyl.  100% will mean 99.99%, but usually that's lab grade isopropyl, so they're probably lying to you.  Either way it will work for the purposes of cleaning computer components.  

 

Source: I'm a chemist.  

[Elbstrand]

I use lighter fluid (zippo) works just as well...

[andsu]

My friend once cleaned his core 2 duo with 38% vodka. It worked fine.

[MrPete1985]

I had to buy some Isoperpyl the other day for some soldering, highest I could find was 91%

[Queek]

I use lighter fluid (zippo) works just as well...

 

My friend once cleaned his core 2 duo with 38% vodka. It worked fine.

 

Those solutions will probably work reasonably well, but using things other than pure solvents can have trace (or non-trivial) amounts of impurities that are non-volatile.  These can stick around on your CPU even though it looks "clean" and may possibly hurt your performance.  Also, depending on the impurity, they can also start to corrode your components.  

 

So use things other than isopropyl with care, and given how cheap the stuff is, just go out and grab a bottle to be safe.