Thermal Paste application on CPU

[Coolmario88]

So I decide it would be cheaper for me to repair my computer myself, I'm about to get the new motherboard soon enough.. I'm just wondering how do i apply the Thermal Paste (Arctic Silver 5) to my AMD FX-6300 CPU? I'm using stock heatsink for the time being and might upgrade to aftermarket one down the road. I'm hearing different methods from do a little dot in the middle and use a business card to spread it, do a X on the CPU and apply the heatsink and some say a circle and others say a pea size dot in the middle and apply the heatsink and I'm done. What's the correct way to do this?

[DavidR]

I have used a couple of methods in the past, the most common being a small pea sized dot in the middle, the attachment of the heatsink should spread the thermal paste by pressure.

I have also tried a thin layer spread over the chip using credit card or small tool.

The biggest problem is how big is a small pea sized dot in the middle, you don't want to apply too much as some could be squeezed out. Or not putting enough on and having uneven coverage and having hot spots.  I never had any issues on the times I did either of these methods, but it was a very long time ago that I last did this.

I'm sure there are youtube clips of doing this and give you an actual idea of how much to use.