The Internet is quite confusing on this topic. Some say you should apply just a pea, some that you should spread it with on applicator on the whole surface (hence creating "evil" air bubbles?). They can't even agree on which part you should apply the thermal paste on: the CPU or the cooler? Thanks a lot for your input.
It's been about 10 years since I built a PC, but I always did the following, and never had any cooling issues - in fact, I got quite good overclocking results:<p>Using plastic gloves (or just put a plastic bag over your hand) spread a REALLY thin layer over the cooler using your finger. This is simply just to fill any small grooves in the coolers surface. If you lap your cooler you don't need to do this.<p>Using a credit card spread a layer around 1mm thick on CPU, the main thing here is to just try and cover the whole area of the CPU that comes into contact with the cooler.<p>The most important thing is not to fret too much about this. Once you've put it all together, run a stress test and keep an eye on the CPU temp, if it goes too high, just clean the paste off and try again :)
<a href="https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Thermal-Paste-Application-Techniques-170/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Thermal-Paste-App...</a><p>TLDR: if in doubt just use the small dot in the center method. the X if you're feeling creative<p>And yes, you just apply it to the cpu and when the heatsink presses on the cpu it will do the spreading by itself
When I had a Dell technician visiting and replacing CPU on a laptop he applied it using the X-method.
Personally I've only tried the dot in the middle method which has worked great for me, but when I look at video tests through a glass plate it seems the X method is a bit safer/more accurate.<p>If there are instructions available from the supplier I'd recommend sticking to that though because it seems like the different thermal paste brands behaves differently in terms of spreading.
My opinion based on experience:<p>Apply a pea-sized drop in the very center and you are done! (and resist the temptation to make it juust a little larger)<p>The pressure will spread it out evenly.<p>There was a video I saw where they did this using glass so you could how the paste spreads.