It always comes up, it is always asked, there is always the doubt because it is inherent to the human being and the truth is that the information is scarce, the opinions are very varied and the real reasons hardly arise . The question is therefore simple: is 96 ° pharmacy alcohol good for cleaning thermal paste?
Alcohol, worse than it looks and the most consumed
As we surely know, there are hundreds of types of alcohols, but the most common or the most common are precisely the ones we usually have on hand. These are pharmacies, also called 96º or if we are really precise we are talking about 96º ethyl alcohol if we are pharmacists. So it really all revolves around whether to use that kind of alcohol or less.
From the outset, we will totally exclude alcohols lower than 96º for the same reasons and more that we will explain below. As we assume, ethyl alcohol has a molecular composition VS2H6O, with a mass of 46.07 g / mol, an average density at 20 ° C of 0.797 g / cm3, a boiling point of 79 ° C and a flash point between 19 and 20 ° C.
Seeing its characteristics and knowing that its evaporation is very fast, why not use it? This is understandable, but the problem is that this idea is totally wrong and the reasons are very broad. Firstly, there is 4% of the material which is obviously not ethyl alcohol and secondly, this remaining 96% is not at all effective in cleaning thermal paste due to its composition. and its density.
Depending on the thermal paste chosen, one can find metals such as zinc, aluminum, silver, diamond and an infinite number of components which, when mixed, give density to the compression of the paste. If we want to properly remove thermal paste, we need one or more compounds that dissolve these metals, or at least the components that hold them together.
Obviously, there have been specific products for this task for years, like ArctiClean, which uses citrus-based solvents (mainly lemon and others in a specific chemical mixture) with soy. On the other hand, ethyl alcohol and even isopropyl do not dissolve anything, no thermal paste or heating pad, they just allow them to be removed with a little more ease by wiping them down.
But the goal is not really that, far from it, the goal is to dissolve the paste and to be able to remove a maximum of it from the surfaces, whether it is on the IHS, on the die or on the block / dissipator.
Why is it not good to use alcohol on surfaces with thermal grease?
The main problem in terms of heat with alcohols is that thermal pastes do not dissolve, so if a paste is specifically designed to fill micropores and imperfections, not dissolving it in microscopic terms is the same as not dissolving it. ‘remove correctly.
This is important, because most of the specific products for this task add a plus like perfect cleaning and also protection against corrosion of metals (not all, but this is the most normal). An alcohol does not produce this, but it does not make it worse as such, it will not oxygenate the metal or corrode it, but we run other risks which are the same or worse if possible.
The problem here is that although ethyl alcohol does not appear to be harmful, one has to take into account that this 4% or more is the so-called denatured components, and this is a pretty big problem in the PC. The components of these alcohols vary among pharmaceutical companies or companies, but as a rule, they usually contain wood naphtha (or a substitute) for pyridine and hard petroleum-derived naphtha minerals, with the exception of benzoate. denatonium.
These copper, aluminum or nickel components only prevent proper heat transfer between the IHS and the heatsink / block, which worsens thermal performance in some cases to some extent. Although everything really revolves around the fact that this type of component called methyl alcohols cannot touch the electronics of our PC anywhere.
If we do, we expose ourselves to irreparable damage, because normally the amount of alcohol is more than needed to clean, it sticks to the components, penetrates them or through their connections and leaves the residue where we are least interested.
It will not be the first or the last component to have a short circuit despite believing that everything was safe, so the use of this type of 96º ethyl alcohol is totally discouraged and as they say it can be dangerous.
What about isopropyl alcohol?
Here we enter a much softer realm, as as a rule, isopropyl alcohol is formulated with 99% or more pure alcohol and where the carbon in the group is attached to two other carbons. If its purity is very high, we will speak of 99.9%, which is quite suitable for cleaning our CPU and GPU.
However, we won’t get the benefits mentioned above because while it’s safe as a compound, that doesn’t mean it really does a good job at the molecular and microscopic level.
Isopropyl alcohol does not dissolve thermal paste either and although we try to remove a TIM from the liquid metal, what it can do depending on the pastes is a kind of oxidation process with a third metal, like nickel .
While these types of alcohols are really cheap and fairly easy to get, say on Amazon, at the price certain specific products at and how long they last, they’re not really worth it. To keep the example, the ArticClean is currently at a little over 10 dollars and with free delivery:
Is it worth opting for this type of product to use alcohols? Of course, the benefits are more than known, these are products with almost two decades on the market, time is saved and better results are obtained and most importantly, they are 100% safe.
