Using thermal paste in the best and most efficient way is of great importance for computer builders. There are many different ways to apply thermal paste. The most popular of these is to apply a drop, cross in the center, onto the chip and spread the paste completely over the chip. Of course, users apply thermal paste in many other styles apart from these ways. Igor Wallossek of Igor’s Lab reveals the most effective way by testing the best way to apply thermal paste for GPUs, not CPUs.
The method found by Igor allows the GPU to run 5 degrees cooler than the most ineffective method. It seems that applying thermal paste in a sausage-style straight line performs better than other methods, at least on the GPU. The sausage-style thermal paste application is 3 degrees better than the drip-style paste method in the center that Intel also recommends. The method that aims to apply thermal paste crosswise gives the worst results. In addition, it should be noted that all tests were performed at room temperature and on the reference RTX 3080 with liquid cooling.
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Things to do before applying thermal paste
According to Igor, it is extremely important to carefully and cleanly remove the old paste already on the chip before applying the new thermal paste. On the other hand, Igor strongly discouraged popular products like Arctic MX-2 or MX-4 for GPUs during testing, recommending thicker pastes like Alphacool Apex, Subzero or similar. Igor cites the “brutal” gap between the GPU and the heatsink as the reason.
Igor also says that before applying the paste, care should be taken to ensure that both the surface of the gem GPU and the paste are as close to the same temperature as possible. However, it is stated that the screwing process of the cooler block after applying the paste is also important. The best known way is to tighten the screws diagonally, slowly and equally.
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