This guide will show you how to remove old thermal paste from a CPU or GPU, and apply new thermal paste. In this case i will be doing it on a GPU.

First step is gathering all the things you will need.

You will need:

A Few Cotton Balls

A Few Q-Tips

Rubbing Alcohol

A Knife/Credit Card

Thermal Paste

Pliers (For Removing Heatsink)

1. First, take off the heatsink off by squeezing the small black tabs that hold it onto the video card with the pliers (the tabs are on the back). If you are taking the heatsink off of a CPU it will be held on by little metal bars that attach at either end (if older AMD or Intel), or for AMD 64's you just pull up the black lever and the heatsink should come off.

2. Once the heatsink is off, put a slight bit of rubbing alcohol onto a cotton ball by pressing it on the opening, and flipping the bottle over real quick.

3. Wipe off the thermal paste from the GPU and heatsink with the cotton ball.

Very quickly you can have a nice clean heatsink.

4. You might have some thermal paste left on the edges of the GPU, so dip a q-tip into some alcohol and rub it off.

Now you have a perfectly clean GPU.

5. Take your thermal paste of choice, in this case i will be using OCZ Ultra

Apply 3-4 generous lines of thermal paste to one side of the GPU. before you do this step however, make sure the alcohol has evaporated or has been dried off of the GPU.

6. Take your knife, credit card, or some other sharp edged object, and spread the thermal paste over the rest of the GPU.

If it is nessecary, add a little more thermal paste to areas where it is needed. spread it over the entire GPU, until you have an thin, but opaque layer spread to every corner on the GPU. make sure you coat the entire top or the paste will be very in-effective when transferring heat.

7. at this point, you are finished and can put your heatsink back on. You can put some thermal paste on the heatsink using the steps explained above, but it is not needed. You may not notice any difference in temperature for a few days as the thermal paste needs to break in.