Is there any effective household product that can be used to safely clean the grease that comes default on a northbridge processor, with intentions of reapplying my own and swapping heatsinks?

I have AS ArticClean, which consists of solutions 1 & 2. Solution 1 smells and works suspiciously like a citrus cleaner/degreaser. Solution 2 is probably denatured alcohol to remove the artic cleaner/degreaser residue.

Hello:

I would try isopropyl alcohol?

Sorry, I should have said isopropyl alcohol instead of denatured alcohol. It is works good on getting the last bits of oils and dirt off, but if there is a lot of gooey residue from the old HS, the citrus cleaner (or ArticClean 1) works great, followed by the alcohol.

Is a citrus cleaner likely to interfere with operation if it gets on the underside of the chip, since it wont evaporate like alcohol?

Oh, and m0002, since I know you did the same mod Im planning to attempt, was there a lot of goo on yours?

The chipset on the Asus A8N-E had a thermal pad, like you see on a lot of OEM CPU heatsinks. It was a lot easier to get off with the ArticClean 1 (citrus cleaner), but I don't recall if I could have gotten it off with alcohol alone.

I used cotton swaps (Q-tips in USA) dipped in the cleaner, so there was not much chance of getting it under the chip. I probably used about 10 swabs, changing them frequently to avoid just spreading around the gooey residue from the old thermal pad. It’s really not that difficult.

I use IPA (isopropyl alcohol) mostly, if your cleaning something it's great, or to get rid of residue, it will also shift soft runny types of thermal paste but not chewing gum remover.

UK Link as an example. http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/endecaSearch ... 1477&N=411

Chewing gum remover gets rid of the tough stuff, but does not evaporate, AND leaves an extremely greasy residue thats easily cleaned up by IPA, use wisely.

http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/endecaSearch ... 0736&N=411


Andy