Found out why one of my units was not hashing and having X's on the chips. Paste was everywhere on the inside. Even the screws holding the heat sink on had thermal paste on them.
images removed
Messy paste wont effect anything but poor cooling, unless your units are overheating, that's not the problem
His look far better than mine did... lol. I had paste on the chips, on the pcb, on the connectors... everywhere.
correct me if i am wrong, but if others suggest that paste is there to provide a thermal connection between a chip and a heat sink, then with heat sink sitting on the top of the chips in s3, I don't see how it could be done by anything other than having paste on the top of the chips (but not necessarily on connectors, I get that).
not sure what you are asking there...
are there other ways to have a thermal connection between chip and heat sink? sure, you can buy thermal pads. search ebay. youll see in the specs that they are massively electrically resistant. need 1000's of volts to make them conduct. Same goes for thermal paste. Its very unlikely that swimming in thermal paste (even on connectors) would cause any problem at all...
yep, but the OP said that cleaning paste improved his machine. If what you are saying is 100% correct about swimming in thermal paste not causing any problems, then why his S3 was improved by removing excess and reapplying some? I just want to understand and from what I heard here, it seems that paste should be on the top of the chip in S3.