Use white spirits to clean off thermal paste?

Associate
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16 Nov 2005
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West Midlands, UK.
Is it advisable to use white spirits to clean the CPU and heatsink? On the Arctic Silver site, one of the items it says you can use is Mineral Spirits, but according to Google, in the UK we call it white spirits.

I know Isopropyl alcohol is recommended, but it's not cheap and I'll probably only need it this one time. White spirits is cheap and easily to get hold of.

Cheers, dagwoood.
 
Permabanned
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10 Sep 2005
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Don't know if it's right or wrong, but I've ALWAYS used a drop of white spirit on my cpus/sinks. Never had a single problem and it does a very good clean-up job.
 
Soldato
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Sunny Manchester
Ive used white spirt in the past to clean heatsinks and cpu cores / IHS's but I found that it puts a little oil film on the area you have just wiped. I use cotton buds and just wipe it off. No need for any extra thermal compound cleaner. Just a waste of money.
 
Associate
OP
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Location
West Midlands, UK.
Thanks for all the replies guys, it's appreciated.

I'll see if just using kitchen paper/soft cloth will do the trick. I know AMD recommend just using a soft cloth and cotton buds, but having never removed thermal paste, I don't know how hard it is to get off.

I'd assumed it wasn't easy because of all the different cleaning products that are available to remove the paste.

Thanks again, dagwoood.
 
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