CPU and socket cleaning

[ArisVer]

I know that the CPU can be cleaned with alcohol to get rid of the thermal paste.

How do I clean the underside of the CPU and the socket and is it necessary (meaning if there are any improvements, like better contact)?

 

[myocardia]

No part of a CPU requires cleaning, except for removing the old thermal paste with isopropyl alcohol.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

myocardia is probably spot-on about this, but I"ll venture a thought about it.

Radio Shack and your local electronics "jobber" warehouse-store offer a solvent generally called "electronics cleaner" or "electronics contact cleaner" in either a bottle or a spray-can which has a brush nozzle that only needs to be soaked with the stuff.

If you have a soft sable paint-brush, you can dab your gold contacts with it -- the gold fingers of a RAM module, the RAM slot, the gold contacts of the CPU. I could risk some criticism on this point, but you can also dab your socket pins (spring-pins).

If you want to "dry off" the part after applying the cleaner, use the ubiquitous "canned air." Be especially careful using ANYTHING to touch the socket pins. Those things have to lay down in the socket a certain way, and have a "nipple" (the "pin" part) which is most likely to fit a dimple in the matching CPU gold contact point. You're not likely to break the pins with a brush, but they can be moved out of alignment. They can also become bent. And fixing bent pins creates a risk that they might be broken.

Finally, you don't want to leave any loose brush-hairs on the CPU surface, the socket or anything else that's being cleaned. So . . . the canned air/blower.

 

[Shehriazad]

A friend of mine was using some cheap thermal paste that managed to "liquify" and get runny enough to get into the socket. Luckily the paste wasn't conductive (otherwise we would've probably seen a fried PC)

Cleaning the socket was hella annoying. But unless you have some messed up paste that manages to turn into a liquid and run into the socket...no need ever cleaning it.

In the case of my friends' socket(AM3+) I made the paste go liquid again with a hair dryer on high heat and then used a compressed air can to blow the stuff off. That probably wasn't the best way to do it...but the board still works to this day...so it's whatever. I only did it because some of it managed to get INTO the holes...hard to reach that with alcohol.

The paste was some "home made" stuff he got in a small computer hardware store.


But yea...generally you wouldn't ever need to clean a socket...and if it's dusty just blow it off.

 

[ArisVer]

Thanks for the input. The question actually came to mind when I was looking at the CPU and I was thinking whether it gets oxidized, mainboard as well. CPUs have been kept in sealed in bags for 18 months and look clean but I thought of asking anyway. As BonzaiDuck mentioned I was going to clean them with PCB cleaner spray (without the brush, see picture), including the mainboard slots and the contact points of the parts, cards and DIMMs.
That was a nice way to clean the mess Shehriazad.