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Comment by sorenjan | Hacker News Reader

I've seen reports and debates that modern heat spreaders are too large for the pea method, and that an X pattern is more common now.

Here's one of the test videos you can find on Youtube about the subject: https://youtu.be/aaxBYrZFJZM?t=199

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I clicked eagerly and appreciated the approach but not the analysis of the results. The only judging criteria was "coverage" (enough but not too much) but no thought was given to thickness, and some application patterns lend themselves to thicker results (just compare the five dots pic to the full coverage or three lines pic). You can see from the results that the "winners" have a fairly thick layer of substrate. You want the absolute thinnest layer of thermal paste that will achieve full coverage.

Thanks for posting an actual test rather than perpetuating tradition without verification

Science!

Giving a single moment of thought to what happens when the paste is squished to this should lead everyone to the conclusion that a square that is equidistant from the edge to the center is the right pattern with maybe a dot it the middle for piece of mind.

That wasn't tested there.

A square is closed and will probably result in a bubble of air being trapped.

You don't have to close it nor do you have to put it on straight down.

It's pretty easy to get this right by using your head rather than following some ethos.

Youtube recommended a similar video where they tested various patterns. Spreading paste over the the whole heat spreader resulted in a small air pocket, while the same method with an additional paste dot in the middle didn't have such issues. But at that point maybe you're getting too much paste instead, as mentioned you want as thin layer as possible. At the end of the day, it probably doesn't matter much anyway.

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