Just realized people keep using the wrong thermal paste amount on Ryzen chips

I keep seeing builds where someone slaps a whole tube of paste on a Ryzen 7 5800X, thinking more is better. It just oozes out the sides and makes a mess, which can actually hurt cooling. I had a system from a shop in Columbus come in last week with temps 10 degrees higher than they should be because of this. What's the worst paste job you've had to clean up?

3 comments

3 Comments

adamellis14d ago

@martinez.diana shorted a RAM slot? How does that even happen?

martinez.diana15d ago

A whole tube is wild, that's just wasting money and making a mess. The pea-sized dot in the middle is the classic move for a reason. It spreads out fine under pressure from the cooler. The worst I've seen was a prebuilt where they used so much it shorted a RAM slot.

mia_singh243d ago

Lol yeah @adamellis, conductive paste can totally short stuff if it oozes onto the motherboard. I've seen it bridge tiny pins near the CPU socket. That RAM slot thing is next level though. Honestly, even the "pea" method can be too much on some modern CPUs with smaller dies. A tiny rice grain in the center is often plenty.