hey everybody Welcome to technical you
may recall a while back I made a video
about isopropyl alcohol I theorized that
you could use just plain old elbow
grease and a microfiber cloth to clean a
CPU contact surface and it would be just
as effective as using the cloth the said
elbow grease and isopropyl alcohol and
my testing did demonstrate that was the
case but I received two very valid
criticisms about the video that I plan
to address address today first criticism
involved the type of paste I was using
when you reapply the same thermal paste
as the one you've previously used
obviously you're going to get favorable
results because it's not two chemical
compounds that are mixing unfavorably
together and number two the amount of
time between thermal paste
reapplications was obviously just a few
minutes on my test bench and the average
real world scenario is going to involve
Two Three or even five or longer years
in between thermal paste applications
and of course crusted on caked on
disgusting old ass thermal paste is
going to be a lot harder to clean off
than something that's been freshly
applied so will my theory hold water
stay tuned to find
[Laughter]
out so here in front of me I have one of
three systems from Circa 2006 it's a
pre-built and it hasn't had a fresh
thermal paste application in over a
decade so testing is going to take place
in three steps step one I'm going to
take the motherboard out of the PC
because I don't really need the rest of
the components for testing and I'm going
to leave everything else in place
including the ram the heat sink and the
old ass crusted on thermal paste from
2006 and I'm going to take a baseline
temperature reading for reference step
two I'm going to remove the heat sink
rub off as much of the thermal paste as
I can with just plain elbow grease and a
microfiber cloth and reapply thermal
paste and take a second reading I'm
going to note the temperature
differential between the old ass paste
and the new paste without a proper
cleaning step three I'm going to do the
same thing I did in step two except use
isopropyl alcohol for test three so what
we're hoping to see is a difference in
temperature between steps two and step
three which will validate the need for
isopropyl alcohol let's go over to my
test bench and get started okay ladies
and gentlemen here we are over at my
workspace as you can see it's a
mess but I've done my best to try and
organize in such a small space so now
what I'm going to do is take off the
heat no I'm not going to do that I'm
just kidding what I'm going to do is I'm
going to set the camera down and I'm
going to remove the motherboard from the
equation here uh discard the rest and uh
we're going to boot it up and see what
we got okay ladies and gentlemen there
she is in all her glory I'm just going
to give her a quick squirt here oh God
this is going to be
bad oh
Lord oh God it's
disgusting oh all right all right so now
what we're going to do is throw this
 cable out no one gives a
and we're going to hook this up to my
trusty
ax860i from Corsair yes Johnny I do use
 Corsair power supplies okay I'm
not a total anti- Corsair
 so just chill now I'm
guessing for those of you unaware that
this is going to uh because it's so old
not going to boot up into 64-bit Windows
it might actually uh but my guess it's
got like a first generation Athlon which
means it does not have the instruction
set necessary to per six support excuse
me 64-bit Windows 10 uh so we're going
to have to figure out something in the
meantime let's put in my little ubcd
stick right here I'll explain what that
is at some point it's just a flash drive
with ubcd on it which is a a fantastic
little tool set that you can use to do
all kinds of nice and diagnos
notics and testing we do have Onboard
video but you know what I think it'd be
better if I just stuck with the DVI
connection and put a card in so I'll do
that take my test card here I don't know
what this card is record I think it's a
uh it's an engineering sample I picked
up from one of my friends up in North
York near the AMD offices oh should I
have said that maybe I shouldn't have
okay everything looks connected let's
boot up and see exactly what we get and
get all these screws off my
goddamn
okay that's loud huh oh oh here we go
we're posting we are posting took a
while error system fan has failed press
f2 to continue okay it probably be a
good idea if I connected a keyboard okay
now where is my USB dongle dongle where
are you dongle
ah there it is okay so here we are at
the ubcd menu uh we're going to just do
a quick memory test here because that
will tell us what CPU we've got are you
ready here's the big reveal I'll zoom in
on the appropriate
spot I was right sort of cathlon 64x
2 so it might actually support Windows
10 64bit and let's see oh Windows is
loading I believe this SSD is installed
with a legacy boot it's not ufi so that
shouldn't be a problem the only problem
is whether or not the system can
actually run Windows 10 64-bit getting
devices ready that's a good sign that's
a good sign all right and we are home
free look at this no problems I
anticipated being at this all night
but as it turns out my fears were
unwarranted this is incredible Windows
is activated what how did that happen
let's take a look here what do we got
temperature wise we we have and this is
often misreported so I'm going to no
these are good these are these are real
temperatures sometimes I don't know if
you aware of this there a lot of AMD
processors older ones in particular that
misreported their uh temperatures and
windows by like 20° so they would show
up as like nine which obviously doesn't
make any sense but these look like real
temperatures so CBU packag is being
reported at 28 to 30° at idle and each
of the cores is resting in between 32
and 37 depending on when we look let's
just jump right into Prime 95 and small
ffts to make it virtually as hot as
possible and there we go we are started
okay ladies and gentlemen it's several
minutes later and it looks like we've
plateaued at a average of 45 to 46° on
each of the cores I think they've peaked
at 47 and
45 respectively going from highest to
lowest and I think that gives us enough
of a idea of how these are going to pan
out for us to get uh our future readings
I hope anyway I was really hoping for
higher temperatures than this I was
hoping for it to get up into the 50s um
so I can have more of a variance but
this will have to do okay so step two of
this process involves removing the heat
sink and taking a look at what's under
the hood and giving it a good rub down
so let's do that now oh
yeah oh so now we're going to set this
down and I'm going to take my microfiber
cloth and just give it a good thorough
cleaning without any isopropyl alcohol
at
all oh it's just like rock hard around
the edges that's
disgusting okay all right let's get to
rubbing trying to get it as stainless as
possible before I reapply thermal paste
but with a reasonable amount of time not
going to sit here all day and do this
this that would be ridiculous okay so
all in all I think I'm happy that's the
cleaned non-alcohol surface of the CPU
and there is the surface of the
non-alcohol
cleaned heat sink so now we're going to
pop this back on with some fresh
paste and take our second reading for
the test okay so here we are uh we're
stressing it once again for test number
two I've applied uh cooler Masters icy
Fusion which is a pretty run-of-the-mill
standard not particularly good not
particularly bad thermal paste and we're
looking to see if we had any general
Improvement in temperature from giving
it a good rub down without any alcohol
and we're going to let it run for a few
minutes again till we get a nice stable
plateau and come back and take an
official reading for the purpose of this
video okay ladies and gentlemen here we
are after the Test's been running for uh
some amount of minutes it's not really
all that important all we looked for is
a plateau where temperatures were not
increasing anymore and we found it
because temperatures are once again
stable exactly where they were before
they've been stable at more or less this
for the entire duration uh so I think
what we can conclude at least for now is
that reapplying fresh termal paste
without alcohol uh doesn't net in any
real significant temperature gain but
what happens when we apply isopropyl
alcohol and give this thing a good clean
will that knock us down a few notches
let's find out okay it turns out my uh
my thermal paste job wasn't Terri
but I did obviously miss a little bit of
the edges not really critically
important with AMG CPUs for the record
as long as you get a good spreading in
the middle you're usually fine
so let's clean this properly quote
unquote and uh see if we can get an
improvement in temperatures okay so here
we have
our life brand 99% isopropyl
alcohol and we are going to put some on
the cloth like that let's just make that
a little
better oh it's like I've never
chloroformed a person before oh yeah
dissol it so nice doesn't it ice Purple
alcohol you know I will say this it
might not necessarily make a temperature
difference but it does make cleaning
easier all right that got off most of it
now let's give it a couple of other
scrubs I hope the camera is getting all
this CU I don't want you to think I'm
cheating that looks pretty good I don't
see much left on it the cloth looks
a little murky but pretty clean so let's
do the CPU heat sink now and let's give
the whole relevant surface area cleaning
obviously the only that really matters
is the surface of the CPU think that
actually contacts the CPU all the stuff
around the edges here is not as
important yeah get in there nice and
deep yeah they're
deep still got some Schmutz let's keep
getting the Schmutz off more
Schmutz need that Schmutz off this thing
was bukocki by a bunch of
thermal paste it looks like it's a
lot on here know it's still a little bit
murky give it another go that's that's
like seven or eight passes with this
thing on 99% alcohol I can almost see my
face in that it seems pretty good so I
think we're we're good to go here we got
two perfectly clean isopropyl alcohol
surf es let's boot back up and see if
we've gained anything temperature- wise
okay there is my third P third P okay
ladies and gentlemen it's time to close
off this portion of the
video once again there we have our two
core
temperatures and there are the recorded
maximums right there in the middle of
the screen actually a little higher this
time uh but well within the margin of
error I don't think there's a real
difference here nothing to write home
about oh and for the record just one
other thing I wanted to note here uh the
fan header that I'm using to plug in
this fan is actually a three pin and um
you're not going to see this on the
video but I already checked uh the BIOS
and uh the the fan speed variance is not
particularly High uh it's been fixed at
2500 RPMs through all the tests uh I
just forgot to actually show you that on
the screen anyway let's go back to desk
Jeff and we'll close it out okay so
before I begin let me address a couple
criticisms that I'm almost certain are
coming my way before I even finish this
video number one yes I'm fully aware
that the temperature variance between
idle and maximum temperatures was low
and as a result I'm not going to be able
to see very fine differences in results
this means that if you're talking about
extreme overclocking uh an i7 on custom
liquid cooling you might actually see an
observable difference between isopropyl
alcohol clean surfaces and plain ass not
isopropyl alcohol clean surfaces but in
the majority of you scenarios as I just
demonstrated when it comes to stock
cooling or even a hyper 22 Evo on a
modestly overclocked I5 or i7 or
something like that go nuts if you have
a bad seating and you need to repaste
don't go out and buy a $9 bottle alcohol
to do it just take the goddamn
cooler off and do it secondly I know the
sample size was small I only had three
motherboards to test on I did use all
three I ran the test two additional
times and noticed no difference um but I
didn't bother filming it cuz the video
is already 12 minutes long so
what are you going to do anyway I think
we're going to call that one a video uh
streaming streaming will happen this
weekend I going to do it at least once a
week now I have convinced my girlfriend
at the very least to join me I have some
friends who maybe are interested in
doing so as well so stay tuned for that
it will probably take place on the
YouTube channel right here because
apparently that's the thing you can do I
was not really fully aware of that until
recently uh and I'd rather just not use
another service I'd rather promote this
Channel and get people here and lastly I
just want to say uh this is not a paid
sponsorship at all these people have not
paid me I just happen to eat lunch at
this place every day in Toronto called
Sky Blue Sky Cafe they're really really
great they're currently up for the best
sandwich award at noun magazine here in
Toronto I'm going to provide a link down
in the description if you have time just
make an account and vote for them please
uh for me because they are like super
super ass nice and uh I just wanted to
give them a little 30-second spot and if
you live in Toronto or in the Toronto
area and uh you are able to go to other
two locations do it I'm telling you it's
an amazing experience it's like sex on a
butt anyhow thanks for watching and I'll
see you next time