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Is it bad to clean off old rock hard thermal paste with 180grit sandpaper?

carguy86
By carguy86
in Cooling
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Posted

I have an old dell desktop and i have to replace the thermal paste on it because the paste that is on there is rock hard, flaky and 14 years old. Can i use sand paper to rub the paste off?

 

My pc:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dvcw23 

(Black Glacier)

 

My server:

Dual xeon x5679 processors, 24gb of ECC memory, Nvidia quadro 295 NVS and 48tb of storage.  (z600) 

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No, if im not wrong, those CPUs do not have a heat spreader on it and doing that can easily kill the CPU.

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See if isopropul alcohol does the job. It should and will be 100% safe

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i'd suggest doing less extreme methods first, like a damp rag.

 

the dankness will make it loosen up a bit ;)

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Yeah , better not.

i5 4670k @ 4.2GHz (Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo); ASrock Z87 EXTREME4; 8GB Kingston HyperX Beast DDR3 RAM @ 2133MHz; Asus DirectCU GTX 560; Super Flower Golden King 550 Platinum PSU;1TB Seagate Barracuda;Corsair 200r case. 

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If alcohol doesn't free it up, use brakedisc-cleaner (assuming it has a heatspreader!).

Just be a bit more careful with that stuff though, and clean it with alcohol afterwards.

Pascal Undervolting topic, get more out of your card with less power!

Why high refreshrate monitors look better even without Freesync/G-sync in one image.
Stutters, framedrops, "lag". How to provide detailed information with your "bottleneck" question, as well as a few solutions.

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18 minutes ago, Sir_Chicken said:

See if isopropul alcohol does the job. It should and will be 100% safe

Dosent do anything to the paste...

My pc:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dvcw23 

(Black Glacier)

 

My server:

Dual xeon x5679 processors, 24gb of ECC memory, Nvidia quadro 295 NVS and 48tb of storage.  (z600) 

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25 minutes ago, Strando123 said:

I have an old dell desktop and i have to replace the thermal paste on it because the paste that is on there is rock hard, flaky and 14 years old. Can i use sand paper to rub the paste off?

 

that can be dangerous if force is applied i guess. i would never recommend such a thing unless its the last option.

 

honestly i dont remember any kind of thermal paste that does not remove off by using wet cloth :D

Current Rig: Intel core i7 4770K Stock 4.5G, Asus Maximus VI Hero, Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz 16Gb (8Gx2), 2x SLi Gigabyte Geforce GTX 670 2Gb GDDR5 3X Windforce Edition, Corsair Hydro Series H100i (Push), JDS LABS O2/ODAC combo, Fiio E18 KUNLUN, Asus Xonar Essence STX (secondary PC), Sennheiser HD700, Hifiman HE 400i, Beyerdynamics DT 990 PRO 250 Ohm, Sennheiser HD 518, Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 850W 80+, Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced, Samsun4g DVD R/W Combo, 3X Cooler Master 120mm Blue LED fans, LG IPS 23EA73, Logitech G710 BLUE, BlackWidow Ultimate 2013 Edition,Logitech G402 HYPERION FURY, Bloody Core V7, SteelSeries QcK Mass MiBR mouse pad

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13 minutes ago, Majestic said:

If alcohol doesn't free it up, use brakedisc-cleaner (assuming it has a heatspreader!).

Just be a bit more careful with that stuff though, and clean it with alcohol afterwards.

Tried, top layer started flaking off, that revealed small fibres in the paste.

My pc:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dvcw23 

(Black Glacier)

 

My server:

Dual xeon x5679 processors, 24gb of ECC memory, Nvidia quadro 295 NVS and 48tb of storage.  (z600) 

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Try using some sort of creditcard to chip it off. 

Pascal Undervolting topic, get more out of your card with less power!

Why high refreshrate monitors look better even without Freesync/G-sync in one image.
Stutters, framedrops, "lag". How to provide detailed information with your "bottleneck" question, as well as a few solutions.

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don't use sandpaper. It'll go straight through the epoxy, gouge out your CPU and kill it.

Just dab some isopropyl alcohol onto it, wait a bit, and then dab some more on and then start rubbing it off with a rag, microfiber cloth or coffee filter. It'll come right off.

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10 minutes ago, KemoKa said:

don't use sandpaper. It'll go straight through the epoxy, gouge out your CPU and kill it.

Just dab some isopropyl alcohol onto it, wait a bit, and then dab some more on and then start rubbing it off with a rag, microfiber cloth or coffee filter. It'll come right off.

Will atempt this when i get home.

My pc:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dvcw23 

(Black Glacier)

 

My server:

Dual xeon x5679 processors, 24gb of ECC memory, Nvidia quadro 295 NVS and 48tb of storage.  (z600) 

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Even better buy a thermal paste removing product such as Akasa's Tim clean.

Linus is my fetish.

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