Am I the only one who keeps seeing people use thermal paste like it's peanut butter?
I was swapping a CPU cooler for a client last Tuesday in their Dell Optiplex, and when I pulled the old heatsink off, there was a literal puddle of thermal paste squeezed out over the socket pins. The guy before me must've used half a tube. I see this way too often in budget builds people bring me. It's not just wasteful, it can actually mess with conductivity if it's the cheap silver stuff and it gets where it shouldn't. A pea sized drop in the center is all you need, maybe a line for longer chips. Why do people think more is better? Has anyone else had to clean up a thermal paste disaster like this?