how do i clean AS of my cpu?

[spanky]

i just bought an xp cpu from a fellow AT'er off the FS/FT boards. he told me that there was a bit of a mess of AS on the core, but i said it's ok...i'll take care of it. now that i got it... i'm wondering... how should i clean it? should i even bother? what do i use to clean the AS off the core? i had an old school pentium cpu with thermal grease on it before. when i tried to clean it off, all i managed to do was spread the mess. is AS the same way? how should i approach cleaning it?


-spanky

 

[todays]

Denatured Alcohol can be purchased at hardware store, Walmart etc. by the quart, and a lint free cotton pad.

 

[bacillus]

a bit of isopropyl alcohol & a soft lint free cloth should do the job nicely!

 

[AkumaX]

i use isopropyl 70% and like a cotton ball. then use a lint-free cloth (sunglass cleaner) to get off all that cotton

 

[Spankthru]

if you take a look at the FAQ over @ arctic silver, you can clean it off with an old
toothbrush and dishsoap(if this is spilled on the ceramic part, like mine was).

AS

But alcohol is good for the core

 

[gaidin123]

I tried the alcohol bit and it kind of worked but not very well. Now liquid dish soap like Palmolive or Joy worked wonders! I just put a tiny bit on a few Q-tips and the AS came off right away. I then used alcohol and more q-tips to clean up the soap residue.

Seriously, dish soap is where it's at.

Gaidin

 

[Colt45]

isopropanol 99% works great, 70% works pretty good too.

dont use automotive stuff like WD-40 etc.

 

[Jen]

use regular dish soap


its that easy............just a little bit and be clean

 

[spanky]

i got a funny story...

last week i got my shiny new 800 tbird (traded my 750 duron for it)... it had some AS on the core, so i took like a q-tip and some isopropyl (sp?) and cleaned it off a bit. than i stuck the cpu in my ecs k7s5a... powered it on. then i smelled something burning, so i turned off the power. i was thinking... aw crap... my cpu is toast prolly becuz i didn't totally clean off the flamable isopropyl. assuming the cpu was gonna be hot, i decided to take the ram out first. turns out it was the ram (256mb pc2100 crucial) that was toasted becuz i accidentally put it in backwards. after i found that out... i was thinking "why couldn't it have been the cpu?!?! its much cheaper!!!"

 

[Yourself]

Engine degreaser on a Q-tip(eats AS up ) then I use a little alcohol to clean it up.

Self

 

[grdh20]

The artic silver manufacture reccomends "goof off" or a "xylene" based cleaner. Probably harmfull, but I prefer WD40, then alcohol.

 

[nealh]

I used dawn and then alcohol to clean the core...

 

[Corsairpro]

THANKS!!! I was just browsing... and had an Athlon 1.33 that was just covered with AS2 and I had tried acetone before but to no avail... tried some palmolive and it took it right off... shoud I wash it off with some water to make sure theres no soap on it and let it dry for a couple of days?

 

[ChefJoe]

This is the age old question of solubilities. Soap helps the ASII grease form micelles which are essentially tiny drops of the oil/grease which can be rinsed away. iPrOH (isopropyl alcohol) is an organic solvent which is also soluble in water but also helps to "dilute" the organic grease. If you want to rinse it off, you could use soap, or you could try dissolving in iPrOH and rinseing it away with water, but if you _just_ use the iPrOH, you'll be making the grease not as thick, but it's still the same grease and can redeposit on the chip. Acetone probably works worse than iPrOH more because it's so volatile and quickly evaporates (so that the runny ASII/acetone grease becomes the thicker ASII grease rather quickly).

Organic chemistry courses are actually useful. heh.

 

[VirginiaDonkey]

I use WD-40 on a paper towel followed by isopropyl alcohol. WD-40 thinks its yummy