The thermal paste trick everyone swears by wrecked my Xbox One S

So I was trying to fix my old Xbox One S that kept shutting off after 20 minutes of gaming. Every video I watched said to use the spread method with a credit card for thermal paste application. I did exactly that with some Arctic Silver 5 and put it all back together. System ran fine for like 3 days then started overheating worse than before. Turns out I put way too much paste on and it was actually insulating the chip instead of cooling it. Has anyone else had this happen or am I just the only one dumb enough to glob it on like butter?

2 comments

2 Comments

derek_dixon7825d ago

... yeah I gotta push back on that a little. The spread method works fine if you know what you're doing, but that Arctic Silver 5 is tricky stuff because it's not as thick as other pastes. The real problem is people forget that the pressure from the heatsink will squish the paste out anyway, so you don't need to cake it on like you're buttering toast. A pea sized drop in the middle is usually enough, maybe a little line if it's a really long chip. Sounds like you just used way too much and it pooled up around the edges, actually blocking the heat transfer. Live and learn though, I've made that same mistake on a laptop once and fried the whole thing...

james_martin9325d ago

Wait, did you actually kill a laptop from too much paste?