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“Too Much Thermal Paste” – Benchmark of Thermal Paste Quantity

Gamers Nexus · 3.3M views · 2018-07-27 · 20:58

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as data that too much thermal paste is mostly a myth and that too little is the real risk.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2019–2024

Topics

Computer architecture & CPUsConsumer devices & gadgets
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thermal pastecpu coolingbenchmarkpc buildinggamers nexus

What people said

simoncion · 2022-12 · Recommendation

> ...use as little of it as possible, to avoid adding thickness. You might be interested in watching this: < [VIDEO] > and maybe also this: < [LINK] >. Do note that the videos contain graphs which summarize the findings.

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willis936 · 2024-03 · Reference

>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. [VIDEO]

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KennyBlanken · 2022-07 · Reference

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: [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

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Sources

Video by Gamers Nexus, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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