I'm having a lot of trouble passively cooling my Epyc 3251 CPU on the M11SDV-8C-LN4F in a 2U case. I'm even ducting a fan to the heatsink and it's not enough: the CPU hits 90 degrees under full load and I have to abort the test. I thought I would try replacing the thermal paste on the CPU (since SuperMicro isn't known for their excellent quality thermal paste) before giving up and moving everything into a 1U case or finding some active cooling (e.g. the 8C+ version of the board).
When I pulled back the CPU heatsink I found a very small die with some paste on it:
I was surprised by the size of the area that had paste on it but set to work wiping off the equivalent area on the heatsink when I realized that the heatsink had some kind of thermal paste or thermal pad on the entire area, not just where the die had thermal paste on it:
Now I'm in a little over my head and not sure what to do. SuperMicro's paste/pad is staying on the heatsink and not getting all over the CPU so one option is to leave that part of the paste alone (although I've already smudged it) and just replace the paste I already wiped off, the part that goes over the die above, which looks like more traditional thermal paste.
Anyone here less of an idiot than me know what the actual right thing to do here is?
When I pulled back the CPU heatsink I found a very small die with some paste on it:
I was surprised by the size of the area that had paste on it but set to work wiping off the equivalent area on the heatsink when I realized that the heatsink had some kind of thermal paste or thermal pad on the entire area, not just where the die had thermal paste on it:
Now I'm in a little over my head and not sure what to do. SuperMicro's paste/pad is staying on the heatsink and not getting all over the CPU so one option is to leave that part of the paste alone (although I've already smudged it) and just replace the paste I already wiped off, the part that goes over the die above, which looks like more traditional thermal paste.
Anyone here less of an idiot than me know what the actual right thing to do here is?
Last edited: