How to Apply Thermal Glue

Place a small drop of thermal paste on the center of the heatsink base. It is recommended to use glue drops that are smaller than a grain of rice. If someone says to use a “pea” amount, that is too much and the thermal paste will stick to the motherboard. ^[1]

• With a circular base heatsink, it is not necessary to spread the thermal paste evenly over the contact surface.

Attach the heatsink to the processor. Straighten the heatsink to the processor in a balanced manner. At this point, the thermal paste will spread itself all over the contact surface, creating a thin and even layer of glue, filling all gaps and leaving no residue on the surfaces.

• When exposed to heat, the glue will spread thinner and wider towards the edge. Therefore, using a small amount of thermal paste is very important because of the effect it brings.

Avoid removing the radiator after it has been installed. It is difficult to check whether the thermal paste has been applied correctly. By doing so, the seal that was just created when installing the radiator will be broken and you will have to go through the whole process again, first wiping off the old thermal paste and then applying the new one.

Reattach the fan to the motherboard. The CPU fan wire needs to be plugged into the slot for the CPU fan because they usually have a PWM function, which allows the computer to automatically adjust the fan speed without changing the voltage.

Restart the system. Check if the fan is spinning. Enter the BIOS by pressing F1 or Del while the computer is in the power-on self-test or POST. Check if the temperature is normal: CPU should be below 40 degrees Celsius when running, so should the graphics processor.

Glue the base of the heatsink. With a square base heatsink, applying glue will be a bit more difficult because if you just put a drop of glue on the surface and press the base down, the glue will not cover the entire contact surface. The methods being applied are quite diverse. Here, we will only cover a few of the most popular methods:

• Straight line method – Apply two thin, parallel strips of thermal paste onto the base of the heatsink. The space between them should be one-third the width of the processor. The strips themselves should be approximately one-third the width of the processor.
• Cross Method – This method is quite similar to the above method, except that the intersecting bands form an “X” shape instead of parallel. The length and thickness of the strips are constant.
• Spread Method – The most popular and effective, this method takes a little more work. Here, we will put a small amount of thermal paste on the base of the radiator. Put on a plastic glove or plastic bag and spread the glue evenly over the surface with your fingers. Do not forget to glue the entire surface in contact with the microprocessor and make sure that the glue is not too thick. In most cases, the glue should be just enough to cover the metal underneath.

Install a heatsink. With the first two methods, you need to install straight down in a balanced way to ensure that the glue will spread over the entire surface. With the latter method, you MUST slightly tilt the radiator when installing to prevent the formation of air bubbles. That’s because usually, the thermal paste is spread too thin, not preventing the formation of air bubbles when applied.

Reattach the fan to the motherboard. The CPU fan wire should be plugged into the CPU fan slot because it usually has a PWM function, allowing the computer to automatically adjust the fan speed without changing the voltage.