A simple piece of plastic, but a clever idea: Noctua has created a thermal paste guard to protect AMD Ryzen 7000 chips from becoming an absolute mess after thermal paste is applied to them.

AMD has developed a great looking heat spreader for the Ryzen 7000 CPU. In fact, they look great, but once you apply the required thermal paste, they can be a bit of a nightmare to clean. Every nook and cranny gets covered in thermal paste. However, Noctua's new NA-STPG1 guard and cleaning set (opens in new tab) may make things a little easier.

The guard is literally a fitted plastic piece that sits around the processor and catches the paste that protrudes from the edge of the heatspreader. The kit also comes with 10 cleaning wipes.

Ultimately, there is no problem with thermal paste on the chip. Most standard pastes are non-conductive these days, so even if it gets on your processor, VRM, graphics card, deskmat, monitor, face, etc., you should be electrically fine.

If thermal paste does get on your face, it would be best to wash it off immediately.

I imagine this kit will appeal more to those who frequently overclock and benchmark their chips, or those who tend to fiddle with things incessantly... AM5 CPUs, but even regular CPUs, I had to take out the alcohol to clean the gunk layer. It wasn't. Alcohol is for cleaning chips, not getting drunk before you start. Most of the time.

Noctua just announced this kit today, and as far as I can tell, there is no place to buy it yet. However, it is listed on Amazon marketplaces around the world, and you can find a link near you here (opens in a new tab).

AMD's Ryzen 7000 series CPUs are available now; see our AMD Ryzen 7950X review (opens in new tab) and AMD Ryzen 7 7700X review (opens in new tab) for our opinion before you buy.