Did I put too much or too little Arctic Silver 5 on this?

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soarwitheagles

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Ok,

I've read and studied massive amounts of forums, posts, pics, and diagrams in regards to the how to's and the how much of applying CPU thermal compounds.

I feel one of the best sites was the one that recommended using a latex glove and spreading a thin amount of Thermal Compound on the Heat Sink rather than the the CPU. So that is exactly what I did. And I used about half a grain of rice amount, but it still looks way toooooooo much!

Well, my new system build was very unstable. It was very disappointing. But we think we narrowed it down to the MOBO and I am in the process of RMA'ing it.

When I took apart the H50 cooler and the i-5 processor, it looks to me as if I put way too much Arctic Silver 5 on it.

I thought I would come here for suggestions and advice.

I posted pics of what I found when I took the H50 heat sink off the intel i-5 750 processor.

Ok, what are your opinions, suggestions, scalding rebukes, criticisms, advice, encouragements, etc.?

Oh, BTW, my temps were no lower than using a mid range air cooler with massive heatsink...

It's me, Soar
 

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It doesn't look too bad, it did spread out fairly evenly, but there does look to be a bit of extra paste on the CPU. I'd say if anything you only put a little too much on. Remember that AS5 is no longer the best paste around. The stock stuff on the H50 is better than AS5 and AS5 has a curing period, so if you just put that heatsink on, found it didn't work well, and removed it you just wasted the AS5 as you didn't let it cure.

My new H50 with stock H50 paste works pretty well on my i7-930, the temp is at 55C full load around 3.4GHz. I want to go higher but I'm slowly working up.
 
It doesn't look too bad, it did spread out fairly evenly, but there does look to be a bit of extra paste on the CPU. I'd say if anything you only put a little too much on. Remember that AS5 is no longer the best paste around. The stock stuff on the H50 is better than AS5 and AS5 has a curing period, so if you just put that heatsink on, found it didn't work well, and removed it you just wasted the AS5 as you didn't let it cure.

My new H50 with stock H50 paste works pretty well on my i7-930, the temp is at 55C full load around 3.4GHz. I want to go higher but I'm slowly working up.

Thanks Calc,

Yeah, I think I put a tad bit too much on this baby.

I realize most people here are anti-arctic silver now, but something really caught my attention at New Egg...

New Egg is showing literally over 4,000 posts are reviews for the Arctic Silver, 96% of which give it top ratings...and to the best of my knowledge, nothin' comes even close to that...

I discovered the compound name of the stuff that is on the H50 [can't recall the exact name at the moment], and out of the 50 some odd people that used and reviewed it, it received terrible reviews and ratings...

So that being the case, I decided to try Arctic Silver 5 simply because I find it hard to believe that 4,000 system builders are terribly wrong....

Anyway, I will definitely use a little less AS5 when I put this baby back together and I would be happy to use something better if someone here can provide accurate data/documentation that a different Thermal compound does better than AS5!

Soar

EDIT: Ok, I think I just answered my own question...I googled top ten thermal compounds and this seems to be the most recent accurate and up-to-date info:

Compliments of Benchmark Reviews found here:80-way Thermal Interface Material Performance Test | Thermal Interface Material,Thermal Paste,Heatsink Compound,80-Way Thermal Interface Material Best Thermal Paste Heatsink Compound Cooling Performance Comparison Benchmark Tests

BTW: there appears to be no more than a .7 degree Celsius difference between these top performers...how interesting! and your H50 has the Shin-Etsu...

Oh...I just found one more site that makes this even more interesting....You can discover how they did the testing [methodology] here:MEGA 44 thermal paste round-up - Testing Methodology

Finally, the one thing that caught my attention on this last chart is that they did not give any of the compounds the necessary curing times [example: AS5 suggests 200 hours curing time...]

Edit 2: I thought I would also throw in some charts of the compounds that performed not so well...
 

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I would still try the AS5. I'm not anti-AS5, in fact it's the only paste I've ever used (and I have two tubes of it laying around), but people have said that there are better formulas out now. I read that the stock paste on the H50 is better than AS5 but haven't put it to the test. I would say to use the best possible paste on the CPU, the AS5 is plenty good enough for older systems or lower-temp/lower-power chips. I used AS5 on my laptop and it brought the GPU temps down a good bit.
 
Thanks Calc,

Yeah, I think I put a tad bit too much on this baby.

I realize most people here are anti-arctic silver now, but something really caught my attention at New Egg...

New Egg is showing literally over 4,000 posts are reviews for the Arctic Silver, 96% of which give it top ratings...and to the best of my knowledge, nothin' comes even close to that...

I discovered the compound name of the stuff that is on the H50 [can't recall the exact name at the moment], and out of the 50 some odd people that used and reviewed it, it received terrible reviews and ratings...

So that being the case, I decided to try Arctic Silver 5 simply because I find it hard to believe that 4,000 system builders are terribly wrong....
.

Believe it. :) Although to be fair they aren't so much worng as just out of date, 5 years ago AS5 was actually considered to be very good.

I am anti-arctic silver because it requires s a curing period which I consider unacceptable. TX-2 is considerably cheaper, requires no curing period, and cools better so it is my paste of choice. MX-2 is another good option that's nearly as good as TX-2 but it's usually a little more expensive.
 
Don't have time to read through the thread but as a matter of interest, what's the best thermal paste/compound brand? Or at least just tell me a few good ones, thanks.
 
Don't have time to read through the thread but as a matter of interest, what's the best thermal paste/compound brand? Or at least just tell me a few good ones, thanks.

You don't know how hard it is to stay civil replying to this...

The thread has hardly any words, learn to read.
 
I've tested more pastes than I care to think about, it's a tedious job. For the "Money" Tuniq TX-2 is the best.
If you don't mind spending some extra cash IC Diamond 7 Carat is an excellent paste. However, as the name
implies, it does have some Diamond particles in it and they will scratch the surfaces they come in contact with.
I used IC Diamond paste on the i7 920 I sold to Hefe and it removed some of the writing on the heatspreader.
Tim's Consultants T-C Grease 9800 is another excellent paste but I think they sold out to Arctic Silver. And Arctic
Silver does have a new paste out, finally, that I think is basically T-C 9800. I haven't tested it yet, so I won't
recommend it, but I think it will be pretty good.

Newegg.com - Tuniq TX-2 Cooling Thermal Compound

Innovation Cooling Diamond "7 Carat" Thermal Compound - 1.5 Grams - FrozenCPU.com

TIM-Consultants - T-C Greaseâ„¢ 0098 Thermal Interface (Grease) Material. Hight Performance Thermal Interface (Grease) at a discount.

Newegg.com - Arctic Silver MTX-2.5G Matrix Thixotropic Premium Thermal Compound
 
You don't know how hard it is to stay civil replying to this...

The thread has hardly any words, learn to read.

1) Chill.
2) The posts ITT are actually quite long compared to the average thread.
3) I didn't have time to read the thread as I CLEARLY stated in my last post. Maybe you need to learn to read.
 
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