Mikhailtech take a look at Arctic Silver's ArctiClean, the first 2 part solution created specifically for removing a thermal interface material and cleaning the corresponding surface.
Given the minor time investment in cleaning the heatsink, I was pleasantly surprised by ArctiClean's ability to get rid of the leftover compound. It's not a miracle solution; it took several "passes" to get most of it off.Read more
But, as you can see the difference between plain rubbing alcohol and ArctiClean is quite noticeable. It'll still take some time and lots of rubbing to get rid of all the paste, but it's a great start. I also used ArctiClean on a copper heatsink which used a ceramic-based compound. It came off completely with the cheaper alcohol and ArctiClean didn't account for any noticeable difference. It seems that the degree to which rubbing alcohol will work compared to ArctiClean depends on the compound in question. Arctic
Silver, as we saw earlier, doesn't come off too well with Isopropyl, but white paste does. I then decided to clean off a CPU which was placed below the aforementioned copper heatsink. It too had a ceramic compound on it.
