Can Thermal Paste screw the motherboard up?

[Tabbery]

I accidentally put the thermal paste on top of the motherboard. I assumed everything is fine and wiped it off with rubbing alcohol. Once I booted up my pc, my 2nd ram slot doesn't work with the pc beeping 5 times. Because of that, I had to resort to one ram slot instead of both of them. Before this incident happened, my pc was working well.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

If the thermal paste is electrically conductive such as Artic Silver, yes it can short out motherboard components.

If it is not electrically conductive, it depends where you spilled it.

If it got inside the contacts where the memory goes, it might well be causing no contact where some of the memory contacts go.

[Grzwacz]

 Greetings Tabbery,

Welcome back to the forum.

I am not an HP employee.

Adding to what Paul has stated:

Five beeps could indicate a possible memory problem.

HP recommends reseating the memory modules. HP then recommends possible system board failure if reseating RAM is negative.

Conductive TIM is destructive when it interacts with motherboard components.

Please indicate the TIM used.

Regards