Just installing my Fenrir at the moment, I presume my Artic Silver 5 is better than the stock Fenrir thermal paste?

Also can someone remind me the best way to get old paste off my CPU, cotton bud and nail varnish remover?

Thanks,

Hobgob.

Akasa TIM cleaner is what I always use. I would imagine Arctic Silver 5 is better than stock paste yes.

Unfortunately I don't have any "proper" TIM cleaner, so I'm looking for the best household alternative.

i wouldnt use a cotton bud, youd get microfibres all over the CPU

i use a pair of old pants to remove old TIM, few drops of TIM cleaner, nail varnish remover should do the trick

if you try this, do make sure the pants are clean before rubbing them all over your CPU

Get a microfibre cloth from your local 99p shop. Make sure it's not one of those fluffy ones, or a peach fuzzy one, something like a smooth lens cloth. Use that. Cotton can still leave fibres behind. IIRC, nail varnish remover leaves a residue, I'd suggest isopropyl alcohol as the next best thing, but I've used the Arctic Silver remover stuff in the past and it's been quite good. So get some of that.

I always use kitchen roll and meths, sometimes I even use it to clean TIM off the HSF and CPU before I drink ......
Oh sorry, lost track there

Note I use kitchen towel preferably cheap supermarket brand as it doesn't have silly fluffy fibres in it, meths beats nail varnish remover as most brands of NVR tend to have lanolin in them these days which leaves a greasy residue and some are totally acetone free which kind of defeats the object!

I don't know. The MX-2 paste that comes on the Freezer 7 Pro etc is just as good as Silver 5. I've no idea how good the paste on the Fenrir is though.

I've seen reviews that show MX-2 outperforms AS5. It's less of pain to apply too.

Given the quality of the Fenrir, I doubt they'd pre-apply substandard gunk.

If you can find lanolin-free, pure acetone NVR then that'd be fine - fat-chance though

Meths will also work but Isoproyl alcohol is by far the best option.

(Don't try oven cleaner - been there, been dumb)

P.S. My gf can't use shampoos or soaps with parabens in so she buys some quite expensive ones. I haven't got the heart to tell her that my Tesco Value 23p for 1 litre Shampoo doesn't have them in either.