This indicates a chiplet or die placement marked with thermal paste. It's typical for such markings.
This indicates a chiplet or die placement marked with thermal paste. It's typical for such markings.
Seems quite typical with excessive thermal paste applied. The solder joints are visible, showing direct heat flow from die to heat sink. This suggests the IHS plate might be too thin to distribute heat evenly before it dissipates to the cooler. After use, it appears the paste has likely dried out completely. I wouldn’t expect it to bake like that; a thinner application would suffice. The thickness of an AMD plate is usually similar to a nickel plate—just a few thousand microns at most.
The 4mm crevice refers to the thicker thermal paste on the left. If you think of it that way, there isn't a visible gap, but some leftover paste fell from the waterblock onto it when I took it off. Looking at it, the clean heatspeeder appears fairly even across the surface. I used a slightly more paste than needed, but most of it spilled out during removal. Gamers nexus confirmed that having too much paste isn't an issue, especially for the temperatures I was working with—2700X before switching to 5950X, and last time I replaced it, I didn’t have enough in the corners. For next time, I’ll choose a medium amount for optimal coverage.
This clearly isn't what you meant. Your images definitely show a lot of detail, but it's not exactly what you described. The 2700x model has been re-lidded, solder was removed with paste under the lid, and it runs with the stock Prism air cooler. The main issue was the thermal paste—once baked, it loses effectiveness. For some pastes like Artic Silver 5, you need to apply a high-temperature bake for about 200 hours. Also, the IHS plate is quite thin, which might affect heat spreading before it reaches the heatsink. You noticed three hot spots, possibly because the plate isn't as thick as it appears in photos. It might be slightly thicker from the discussion and images you shared.