Noctua has announced the first thermal paste application advice for AMD’s new Ryzen 7000 CPUs, along with its corresponding “octopus-shaped” IHS, as mentioned in a tweet by @momomo us. Noctua advises just one dot at the centre, spanning 3 to 4 mm, to properly cover the entire IHS for Ryzen 7000.
The dot application is not novel and is still, arguably, the most often used method of application. For Noctua, though, this is a significant departure from the five-dot layout it suggests with comparable-sized AM4 CPUs, where you place four little dots at each of the IHS’s four corners and one huge dot in the centre.
AMD specifically designed AM5 to have the same dimensions as AM4 for cooler compatibility, so it’s surprising to see Noctua suggest different thermal paste uses for both sockets.
In reality, Noctua specifically refers to AM5 as a smaller “CPU Size” than AM4, which is the justification for the variations in thermal paste application.
However, Noctua’s decision to use a dot pattern for AM5 might be the right one. The IHS on Ryzen 7000 has an octopus form with eight slots cut out of it to create a place for capacitors on the CPU’s PCB. This IHS design is unlike any other we’ve ever seen. The IHS was always designed in a completely linear box in AMD’s earlier designs, just like AM4.
The cuts significantly limit the IHS surface area of the Ryzen 7000, which is probably why Noctua modified the thermal paste pattern it advised using from AM4’s five dots to just one dot. There is no doubt that the single dot will function flawlessly with AM5 because it still functions on AM4 and other sockets of a similar size.
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