The Noctua NA-TPG1 might cost a lot of money for a small piece of film, but it makes a world of difference when you're installing an AMD Socket AM5 U. It makes applying thermal paste much less messy, and stops you getting paste into the notches on your processor's heatspreader.
Pros
Makes AM5 U installation much less messy
Easy to use
Bundles with wipes available
Cons
Expensive for what it is
Shame it's needed at all
The Noctua NA-TPG1 is designed to stop you getting any goo lodged in the notches of your heatspreader when you apply thermal paste to your new AMD Socket AM5 U, acting as a thermal paste guard.
AMD Socket AM5 Us, such as the apply thermal paste to these new Us, which is why Noctua has come to the rescue.
A large part of the reason this aforementioned cooler compatibility was made possible is down to the design of AMD's new Us themselves. The heatspreader on Ryzen 7000-series Us has a unique look, with lots of notches around the edges. If you're wondering why AMD went with this design, it's largely down to keeping the U socket to a similar size as AM4.
Adding the notches enabled AMD to place extra chips onto the U substrate, instead of making the U package bigger, and you can clearly see the notches are filled with these tiny extra chips. This is why you want to avoid using electrically conductive thermal paste on a Socket AM5 U, but a more annoying issue is that they're also great traps for any type of thermal paste.
This issue was raised the instant we saw the new heatspreader design, and sadly we can confirm that thermal paste does indeed find its way into those notches readily. It happens as you install your U cooler, with the pressure squeezing any excess out the sides, and any rotation of the U cooler during installation, or simply removing it, just makes matters worse. It can also happen when you clean paste off the U afterward.
If you just install your cooler and U once, you may not need to worry, especially if you nail the minimum amount of thermal paste required too. However, if you swap out your cooler or motherboard for an upgrade, or otherwise do this regularly, then it compounds the problem. It's been a real issue for us when testing Socket AM5 motherboards, as we reapply thermal paste each time, and if we don't completely clean the U and cooler, the thermal paste builds up.
Other Us are easy to clean, as their heatspreaders have square edges, but cleaning Ryzen 7000-series Us is much more time-consuming. There are also gaps around the edges of the heatspreader on AM5 Us, which can allow thermal paste to get under it. However, one potential solution to this problem is the Noctua NA-TPG1 thermal paste guard.
The press kit we received includes three guards, but retail kits include cleaning wipes too. The guards are thin plastic sheets that sit over the U and hug the edges of the heatspreader, sitting on top of it once you've installed it into your motherboard's U socket and closed the latch. As it sits nearly level with the heatspreader, it prevents thermal paste from slipping down over the sides of it and into those notches.
We applied the usual cross pattern of thermal paste and installed a cooler, then removed it a few minutes later to allow the paste to spread. The guard actually came away with the cooler when we removed it, stuck to it with thermal paste, but the U didn't have any thermal paste in those notches, despite the cooler being rotated a little during installation.
Suspecting that the clean-up process would result in thermal paste getting into the notches, we applied a fresh guard on top of the U and then cleaned it and this worked well. Critically, doing the same but without guards saw thermal paste enter the notches, and even more ended up in these areas when we were wiping off the paste afterward.
Price
The Noctua NA-TPG1 thermal paste guard price is $9.95 (£8.99), which might seem expensive for what it is, but in our view it's a price worth paying for not getting thermal paste in the notches of your AM5 U.
Verdict
The Noctua NA-TPG1 thermal paste guard genuinely works, and makes installing and installing AMD Socket AM5 Us much easier (and much less messy). When you consider this, the price of under $10 isn't too bad, and you can get bundles that include a tube of thermal paste and wipes as well. We recommend getting a kit with a couple of guards so you can apply another one if needed.
If you're interested in upgrading your U, then make sure you check out our guide to the how to build a gaming PC, where we take you through the whole process from start to finish.
