A simple piece of plastic, but a clever idea: Noctua has created a thermal paste guard to protect your AMD Ryzen 7000 chip from getting completely smudged with thermal paste.
AMD has put together a nice looking heat spreader for their Ryzen 7000 CPUs. It’s so great that it’s a bit of a nightmare to clean once you’ve smeared it all over with the much-needed thermal paste. All corners and crevices are stuffed.But Noctua’s new NA-STPG1 Guard & Cleaning Set (opens in new tab).
The guard is literally a snug-fitting piece of plastic that sits around the processor and catches any paste pressed against the edge of the heat spreader. is also attached.
Finally, it’s okay to have thermal paste all over the chip. Most standard pastes today are non-conductive, so it’s probably fine electrically to get them on your processor, VRM, graphics card, desk mat, monitor, face, and more.
If you get thermal paste on your face, it’s best to wash it off immediately.
I think this kit will be much more appealing to those who frequently benchmark overclocking chips and tend to tinker with things constantly. This is because replacing the tip and reapplying it couple by couple will actually build up a lot of thermal grease on the tip. of hours/days/weeks. The alcohol had to be removed just to remove a layer of gunk from an AM5 CPU or even a regular CPU. Alcohol is for cleaning the chips and not drunk before starting. Most of the time, anyway.
Noctua just announced the kit today, so as far as I can see it’s not available anywhere yet.That said, it’s listed on Amazon marketplaces worldwide and you can find local links here (opens in new tab).
However, AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series CPUs are out now. AMD Ryzen 7950X Reviews Let You Know What You Think About Them Before You Buy (opens in new tab) and AMD Ryzen 7 7700X review (opens in new tab).
