Just grab a bag of long grain rice and look for the biggest 1's, easy. That would make it less than a quarter of a pea (unless you have smaller peas over there than we do here). ;-)

Cheers.

Ah the last time I tried using that small of an amount I had issues with it not spreading out and giving good thermal transfer. That was also many moons ago using Atric Silver about the time it first came out.
Since then I have gone more. Which normally spreads out to within a few mm of the edges of the heat spreader on the CPU.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Good to know. Thanks

The word we use in the states is usually Q-tip but I think we have other names for it too.

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merle - vote yes for freedom of speech

Just grab a bag of long grain rice and look for the biggest 1's, easy. That would make it less than a quarter of a pea (unless you have smaller peas over there than we do here). ;-)

Cheers.

Ah the last time I tried using that small of an amount I had issues with it not spreading out and giving good thermal transfer. That was also many moons ago using Atric Silver about the time it first came out.
Since then I have gone more. Which normally spreads out to within a few mm of the edges of the heat spreader on the CPU.

Smoothness and flatness of the mating surfaces is a factor too. Those who carefully lap both the heat spreader and the heat sink core to be very flat with a mirror finish probably need less, but I don't think this thread gets into that extreme.

                                                                   Joe

Just grab a bag of long grain rice and look for the biggest 1's, easy. That would make it less than a quarter of a pea (unless you have smaller peas over there than we do here). ;-)

Cheers.

Ah the last time I tried using that small of an amount I had issues with it not spreading out and giving good thermal transfer. That was also many moons ago using Atric Silver about the time it first came out.
Since then I have gone more. Which normally spreads out to within a few mm of the edges of the heat spreader on the CPU.

Smoothness and flatness of the mating surfaces is a factor too. Those who carefully lap both the heat spreader and the heat sink core to be very flat with a mirror finish probably need less, but I don't think this thread gets into that extreme.

                                                                   Joe

Yeah there are many variables. Such as the thermal compound itself. I took some photos with my old C2D E8400 for an example of how I normally apply it.

Thermal compound applied to CPU thermal spreader. Not my best application, but lets see how it goes.


Heatsink mounted and then removed.


For this the CPU wasn't powered on to heat up. That would have let the thermal compound spread out a bit more evenly. I should also note the layer of thermal compound looks thinker in the photo than it is. I could still see most of the information on the CPU heat spreader through the thermal compound.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Good to know. Thanks

The word we use in the states is usually Q-tip but I think we have other names for it too.

"Cotton bud" most places I've been.
As for spreading heat-sink compound, I keep all my old credit/debit cards and similar and use them to carefully smear the compound all across the surface of the CPU/GPU housing. (They are also handy in breaking apart pressed-together casings on all-in-one PCs, tablets, tc.)

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