How to clean off thermal grease for new heatsink

[macadami]

I just recently bought a vigor gaming monsoon 2 TEC/heatpipe cooler and a tube of artic silver to replace the stock setup on my fx-60 , but i'm not sure how i should go about cleaning off the old thermal grease that came with the chip. I'm sure getting as much of the old stuff off for the artic silver to work would be best, but i'd hate to damage the chip or waste a lot of time scrubbing it...any advice will be much appreciated.

 

[macadami]

moments after posting this i see a post with the answers i'm looking for just a few threads down, if you have anything specific to mention here please do, but i think scraping with a plastic card, using isopropyll alcohol and a coffee filter should do the trick before putting one bb sized dab of AS 5 in the middle of the chip.

 

[kshipper]

Trade Secret: A very small amount of WD40 on a paper towel. Wipe very gently, the Arctic Silver will turn to soft goo real fast and it darn easy to wipe it off onto the motherboard. Final cleanup should be the 99% alcohol.

 

[bridonca]

I have been using wd-40 to disolve the thermal grease. It works really well. Only down side is that it leaves a greasy residue that will not help with the cooling performance, so you have to clean the wd-40 off with an alcohol to get rid of the film.

 

[noobie123]

i use goo gone. it works really well plus it was made for removing sticky stuff so pretty handy to have around

 

[little_scrapper]

I run out to the driveway with my cooler and scrape it across the asphault. stupp comes right off.

 

[apache_lives]

I have been using wd-40 to disolve the thermal grease. It works really well. Only down side is that it leaves a greasy residue that will not help with the cooling performance, so you have to clean the wd-40 off with an alcohol to get rid of the film.

Brasso will take off just about anything and polish it too, and WD40 will remove the black yes and metho will take off anything after that

 

[Alsone]

Use Articlean or

Akasa Citrus cleaner which really disolves grease well.

Only thing with citrus cleaners is they too can leave an invisible residue so recommend a final wipe with Isopropyl Alcohol.

All you should need is a paper tissue. A good cleaner will simply dissolve it away.

I use the Akasa stuff and its very good. I've removed AS5, AMD thermal grease and AMD thermal wax (the stuff thats solid and melts when the heat sink warms up after fitting) all with the Akasa Citrus in around 2 -3 seconds!!

Finally make sure you clean both the heatsink and top of the cpu as every surface should be clean and don't handle either afterwards as the natural grease in your fingerprints will acts as insulation.

 

[modmandan]

I run out to the driveway with my cooler and scrape it across the asphault. stupp comes right off.

Now that's funny !!!!

Brasso and goo gone do work, but I have found that a small amount of lighter fluid works very well and does not leave and residue to have to clean again!

 

[genzeleam]

I run out to the driveway with my cooler and scrape it across the asphault. stupp comes right off.

I actually laughed pretty hard at that one.