3.3M views · Jul 27, 2018 · 20:58 · 1 HN recommender · 4 mentions · discussed 2019–2024
Gamers Nexus benchmarks how the amount and application method of thermal paste affect CPU cooling. It compares pea-sized dots, thin spreads and large blobs with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN cites it as data that too much thermal paste is mostly a myth and that too little is the real risk.
“Too much paste is fine; too little is not.”HN comment, 2024
“You might be interested in watching this”
Graphs summarizing benchmark results on paste quantity
> ...use as little of it as possible, to avoid adding thickness. You might be interested in watching this: < this video > and maybe also this: < link >. Do note that the videos contain graphs which summarize the findings.
“This is mostly urban legend.”
Benchmark showing too much thermal paste is mostly a myth
This is mostly urban legend. You have to really get ridiculous to apply too much thermal paste but you can use too little, so no reason to err in that direction in mass manufacturing. this video
“Excess paste just squirts out the sides, which is not a problem unless it is conductive”
Testing shows excess paste squirts out and does not cause overheating
One person on SomethingAwful re-pasted their MBP (of unknown age), and saw reduced temperatures. They never said it was "overheating", Macs (and all Intel/AMD processors...) have thermal throttling so they can't "overheat", and it's normal for thermal paste to degrade within 2-3 years. It's also normal for laptops to get clogged with dust; I saw a huge reduction in temps on my MBP after I cleaned out the heatsinks, having taken the cover off and found them clogged. The person posted pictures of the original paste job from the factory. The amount of paste is not unreasonable, and what was instead evident was that the paste had dried out, which, again, is normal. That didn't stop people from overreacting and declaring a corporation (one famous for obsessively controlling its production chain) to be idiots. It did not have "10x the thermal paste needed." GamersNexus has solidly disproven the "too much paste causes overheating" myth. Excess paste just squirts out the sides, which is not a problem unless it is conductive: this video What caused people to really lose their minds was a screengrab that was claimed (with no evidence whatsoever) to be from the repair manual showing wildly inappropriate levels of thermal paste being applied. The screenshot was never confirmed and given the source - again, SomethingAwful - it was almost certainly not the repair manual or factory instructions (the factory instructions wouldn't be in English, for starters...) link Seems Pepperidge Farm's me
“Too much paste is fine; too little is not.”
Data shows excess paste is fine, too little is not
>You want to use as little paste as possible while fully covering the heat spreader. The data disagrees. Too much paste is fine; too little is not. this video
