Is it okay to clean the backside of your CPU with a paper towel?

[ZeRedz]

I was one day reinstalling my CPU and I accidentally got some dried thermal paste on the left backside of the CPU. I put some isopropyl alcohol on a paper towel and cleaned it off. I didn't rub the CPU with any force or anything. So, yeah. Is it okay to use a paper towel?

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

17 minutes ago, ZeRedz said:

I was one day reinstalling my CPU and I accidentally got some dried thermal paste on the left backside of the CPU. I put some isopropyl alcohol on a paper towel and cleaned it off. I didn't rub the CPU with any force or anything. So, yeah. Is it okay to use a paper towel?

Eh... it's not the best. You're better off using a microfiber cloth just so you don't leave any paper towel chunks and fibers on the contact pads. But if there aren't any left over bits from your paper towel, it should be fine. 

 

Hopefully it's a LGA CPU. Never do that with an AMD CPU (with the exception of AMD LGA sockets) since you'll bend the pins. 

[ZeRedz]

Just now, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Eh... it's not the best. You're better off using a microfiber cloth just so you don't leave any paper towel chunks and fibers on the contact pads. But if there aren't any left over bits from your paper towel, it should be fine. 

 

Hopefully it's an LGA CPU. Never do that with an AMD CPU (with the exception of AMD LGA sockets) since you'll bend the pins. 

It actually is an LGA CPU.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Just now, ZeRedz said:

It actually is an LGA CPU.

It should be fine then. Again, just make sure there aren't any fibres left over from the paper towel, on the contact pads of the CPU. 

[ZeRedz]

5 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

It should be fine then. Again, just make sure there aren't any fibres left over from the paper towel, on the contact pads of the CPU. 

Out of sheer curiousity, would left over fibres damage the CPU? Also, yeah. I made sure the CPU didn't have any lint or whatever on it before installing it.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Just now, ZeRedz said:

Out of sheer curiousity, would left over fibres damage the CPU?

It shouldn't... but could cause contact issues. Shouldn't be enough to catch fire or anything (if that's even possible with the amount of power passing through a socket).

[ZeRedz]

Just now, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

It shouldn't... but could cause contact issues. Shouldn't be enough to catch fire or anything (if that's even possible with the amount of power passing through a socket).

Alright, thanks for the reply.