Hi everyone I'm going to go through how to remove your heat sink, clean off the old thermal paste, and re-apply some new thermal paste.

For those of you who haven't tried this, don't be too worried about having to take your pc apart. This isn't as difficult a maintenance task as you may think.

You'll be freaking out that you could short your pc with static, or you'll put too much thermal paste on and won't see a difference in temperatures and other stuff like that. But don't worry I'm going to make this daunting task easier by giving you a step by step run through of what you'll need and need to do to get the job done, as painlessly as possible.

There will also be some pictures to help you visually along the way. So...really don't worry, I got your back on this one.

I was also apprehensive when doing this 'procedure', and trust me when I say that I've made the mistakes. OK not as bad as shorting my whole pc out, but it was truly a learning curve for me and I had my mate on the phone helping me for the better part of an hour. Which it won't take you by the way. You'll be looking at around 30 mins to get this done.

So first off we'll sort a list of things you'll need.

A screw driver for those of you that have an Intel CPU, don't worry that doesn't mean it will be a harder job it will just mean you have screws instead of clips that AMD uses.
Some tissue for wiping off the old thermal paste
If you have some, rubbing alcohol this will help shift the old thermal paste easier but it isn't essential.
Clean hands, you don't want to be leaving grease all over everything you touch.
Also some positive attitude. For all you aspiring techies out there this should be fun for you not a chore.
Hwmonitor - this will monitor all your temperatures and voltages in your pc.

OK lets get started!

First of all your going to want to install Hwmonitor and take some readings of your CPUs current temperature when idle and under load so. Load the program and leave it for a couple of minutes and take not of your CPUs current and peak temperatures, repeat this for a game you know uses the CPU a lot so you have two temperatures to compare to.

Finally you're going to want to wash your hands now if you haven't done so, like I said you don't want greasy hands, you'll just leave a greasy residue all over your components and may give you a case of butter fingers. Sufficed to say you don't want to drop anything.

Now shut-down your pc, flick the power button at the back and remove all cables connected to the I/O(input/output) section that's on the the back of your PC. This will include most of your peripherals such as your mouse, keyboard, monitor, audio and any external components attached like portable HDD's (Hard Disk Drives), printers and USB(Universal Serial Bus)devices.

You're now going to want to remove the power cable that will be situated next to the power button on the rear of the pc case, this could be located either at the top or the bottom depending on how your case mounts you PSU(Power Supply Unit)

Right, if the room your in has a solid floor then your good to go, however if it does not then you'll need to find a room that has a solid floor. This is a good idea because your components don't react well to static discharges and when I say doesn't react well that means that it will break some components if you have a static discharge near your computer. The hard floor acts as a grounding for your body and prevents any build up of static charge that you may get if you were on carpet. If you don't have a solid floor then you can always take it outside into the garden if its not pissing down with rain, like, it does most of the time here in England or you can get a specially designed anti static strap that grounds you, which can be bought from places such as Amazon.

Anyway go to your chosen area to work and take your PSU cable with you, you'll need this to ground your computer and discharge any excess charge. The reason being is your PSU holds a charge and plugging it into a mains socket disperses that charge because your grounding it with the internal earthing wire. Once done take the cable back out you don't need to leave it in.

It's now your turn, you'll need to disperse any static charge you may have, this can be done easily by touching the metal chassis of your computers case. Simples yeah?!

You are now ready to remove the side panel and disconnect any fan cables you may have if you have side fans, I do.

Put the case on its side with the internal section facing up this will make it easier to take stuff out and put back in.

Find the fan header connection. This can be found by just following the cable from the heat sinks fan to the header

Pull out the fan header connected to the CPU fan, you take this off cause the heat sink is about to be removed.

Look for the big metal grill type thing which isn't hard to miss, it usually has a fan on which is called the Heat Sink.

If you have an Intel CPU you'll need your screw driver now, if you have an AMD then undo the clips using the lever which is at the bottom of the heat sink.

The heat sink will be a little stiff, so give it a jiggle and pull up, it feels like a suction effect like when you get a boot stuck in deep soggy mud. Don't worry about damaging anything it will take more than that to break these things.

Once that's off, take your rubbing alcohol(not too worry if you haven't got any the paste should come off with just the tissue, will just mean a little more elbow grease) and put it on some tissue then clean the copper section of the heat sink with the old excess thermal paste on.

Following this you'll want to clean the CPU with another piece of tissue and alcohol much in the same way you cleaned the heat sink. At this point you don't want your tissue dripping wet with alcohol. Components don't like wetness as much as they don't like static. In a circular motion clean off the old thermal paste.

Now give your heat sink and CPU a going over with clean tissue to make sure both are clean properly.

Now the bit you've been building up to, unpack your new tube of Thermal Paste if you haven't already and now you can apply it to the CPU.

Please note that this is where I made my first 2 mistakes. First I read the instructions on the packet(don't) saying to spread the thermal paste using the applicator spatula (again don't) cause you'll end up putting more paste on cause you think its not going to cover the CPU that was my second mistake putting too much. As a result it didn't change the temperature of my CPU and I thought I had wasted my time. So I had to research to find out how much is actually needed. The reason why I write up these tutorials is because I want aspiring techies like yourselves, not make the same mistakes I have and save you guys a lot of time.

Going back to the thermal paste 'Less is more' so we will use one of the 3 methods of application, in our case the Pea method.

This method and the other two methods can be seen in this video showing you how much to apply and how it will spread when the heat sink is re-attached.

Watch this video on How Thermal Compound Spreads

The thermal paste is used as a conduit to disperse the thermal build up of the CPU to the heat sink, when in use having too much on can reduce this dissipation or not change the temperature of your CPUs cores at all. You'll be able to find this out using Hwmonitor after you've applied the paste and put your computer back together remembering to attach the Fan header cable back in its right place, if your not sure it should say CPU fan next to the connection.

If you have done all this correctly you should notice a drastic difference in your CPUs temperatures compared to your previous temperatures.

For example before re-applying the paste my CPUs temperature was hovering around the mid 30's when idle and would go to the mid 40's when playing Battlefield 4.

After applying new paste my temperatures dropped dramatically and now in idle hover around the mid 20's and goes up to the mid 30's when playing games.

This helps to keep the cases temperature lower.

I hope this was helpful and if you want to learn more about CPUs you can check out my CPU article

Milan Tomic

Hi. I’m Designer of Blog Magic. I’m CEO/Founder of ThemeXpose. I’m Creative Art Director, Web Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, Industrial Designer, Web Developer, Business Enthusiast, StartUp Enthusiast, Speaker, Writer and Photographer. Inspired to make things looks better.