Thermal pad good enough?

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Scarlet

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Well I purchased the parts for my computer yesterday at neweggs. I forgot one thing though. The thermal paste :eek: I'm not sure if the thermal pad is good enough? I'll think I'll stay on the safe side and get the paste. Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound is pretty good from what I hear. How would I apply it though? Like a dot on top of the CPU?

Oh and would I leave the pad on there too? I don't really know what they look like, but I assume a small flat pad on the bottom of the HSF?.... >_<

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103537
 
Just make sure when you go to put the arctic silver on that all trace's of the pad are gone,Just go get some isopropyl alcohol to make sure the heatsink is perfectly clean befor applying the arctic silver.
 
Ah ok I guess I'll remove the pad then. Is there software that can monitor the temperature of the CPU? I think u can look at it in the Bios? But is there a more conveniant way.

I'm not sure what temp is the norm either. Is it like 50C?
 
To add to what macdude said, just apply a small dot to the center like he said, but DO NOT spread it around. That was necessary on older versions of arctic silver, but not with arctic silver 5. The reasons for this are two-fold. a) it will spread out the necessary amount over time once the pressure of the heatsink is placed on it. and b) the heat from the microprocessor emanates mostly from its center.

see here:
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm
 
That is very wrong and will destroy your cpu.

You must spread it out so it will gain contact with the heatsink. It says it right there in the link you just posted.
 
Look again. Observe the last three paragraphs of the section on p4/amd64 processors.

I quote:
"Since the vast majority of the heat from the core travels directly through the heat spreader, it is more important to have a good interface directly above the actual CPU core than it is to have the heat spreader covered with compound from corner to corner.

The photo to the right shows how the pressure from the heatsink base spreads the compound and also shows a P4 with the heat spreader removed to show the location of the actual CPU core that is the source of the heat.

While the CPU core on an Athlon64 is slightly larger than the P4 core, it is still much smaller than the metal CPU Cap that covers it."

It tells you to spread the Arctic Silver 1,2, and 3 on the bottom of the heatsink, not on the processor. For Arctic Silver 5, one should not even be applying compound to the bottom of the heatsink, not to the processor. Thus, no spreading should be involved.

And no, it won't destroy your cpu because the one I'm using right now works just fine.
 
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