Thermal Grease in Socket

[Mitz]

Anyone ever get thermal grease on the cpu socket? I was exchanging my cpu today and the grease was all gooey and dropped on the socket. Google search turned up lots of experts' advice, ranging from "whatev..." to "OMG GET A NEW MB!!!1" but thought I'd ask you guys and see if anyone had to deal with it directly. I took the board out, cleaned the socket off with alcohol, then irrigated the piss out of it with more alcohol. Any other ideas?

[unpro]

really all you can do, good luck

[Rambizzle]

how the fuck do you manage this...

is this you?

[Mitz]

More like this.


The grease was still warm because the computer had been on earlier. It was runny and got all over the damned place. I'm about to go plug it back in and see if I take the surfboard to the crotch.

[defrag]

Good luck. Try getting a needle and scraping as much as you can out of each hole. Lesson #1 let it cool before taking off a heatsink. Although if you used electrically conductive thermal paste, the second you turn it on you are fucked. If you used non conductive paste and do a good job cleaning, you might save yourself.

[Mitz]

Lesson #1 let it cool before taking off a heatsink.

Definitely learned that one the hard way. I did use Arctic Silver when I put the previous cpu in, but it's all back together and running fine. Looks like I got it clean enough. I used a shitload of alcohol, a flux brush to dig at the holes, and a bunch of q-tips to soak stuff up. Then I flipped the board upside-down over a bucket and sprayed a more alcohol in with a needle oiler. On the bright side, I used the time while that was drying to polish the bottom of the heatsink. Now if I can get the OC stable, I'll be happy.

And to save anyone the trouble,

[seanality]

as long as its not bridging one hole to another you should be fine.

[Mitz]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Much appreciated.