amd thermal paste

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I want to remove this processor an Athlon1700+, and put it in another
motherboard. I am guessing it has to be cleaned of the old paste and
redone.? What is a good paste to use.? How much/thin should it be.? This
will be my first install of a cpu. Thanks.
 
I want to remove this processor an Athlon1700+, and put it in another
motherboard. I am guessing it has to be cleaned of the old paste and
redone.? What is a good paste to use.? How much/thin should it be.? This
will be my first install of a cpu.
Click to expand...

Check the archives for more info. Bottom line: it should be thin, but
beyond that it probably doesn't make whole lot of difference. Any paste
will work.
 
the best is artic silver. shin etsu (sp??) is another good paste.
ceramic pastes are 2nd best, then the silicon pastes/pads come in 3rd (which
is supplied with standard HSF's)

however you may loose 3-4c optimum with artic silver over the silicon based
goo.

application - i dot a small bit of Artic silver on the core of my CPU, and
smear out with finger. hard to explain how thick it is, but a film of paste
is best described. the paste is there for 2 reasons, to fill in any
inperfections of the 2 surfaces (CPU core and HS face) creating a 100%
contact area and to transfer heat.

please be aware that artic silver is conductive, so careful on where you
place it.

tim
 
I want to remove this processor an Athlon1700+, and put it in another
motherboard. I am guessing it has to be cleaned of the old paste and
redone.? What is a good paste to use.? How much/thin should it be.? This
will be my first install of a cpu. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Arctic alumina or arctic silver are what I use. The 1700+ came with a
thermal pad on its retail box heatsink, but this may not be what you
have. Either way, the procedure is much the same:

1- Clean off the old heat transfer material from both the CPU die and
the heat sink. For thermal pads I usually take a razor refill (available
where grooming products are sold) of the double edged variety and
split it in half. I then CAREFULLY scrape away the remaining thermal
pad. From here, the procedure is the same for thermal pads and thermal
grease. I take a CLEAN rag and put a little acetone on it. I then polish
the heat sink and CPU die with it until all traces of the old goop are
gone. I then take an alcohol swab (the kind diabetics use to swab an
injection site) and give both the CPU die and heat sink a quick wipe. I
wait a little bit for the alcohol to dry and then go on to step two:
rapplication of the thermal compound.

2- I usually squeeze a very small amount of thermal grease onto the CPU
die. Then, taking a flimsy type of plastic sandwish bag (not the
microwave safe kind with holes in it) and put my finger inside it and
then smear the grease in a thin even layer over the CPU die. Then comes
step three: rapplication of the heat sink.

3- Carefully seat the heat sink onto the CPU and socket. Take care to
align it correctly! The 'step' on the heat sink goes on the side of the
plastic socket that the lever attaches to. Make sure the heat sink is
lined up properly so that the metal latch presses down on the heat sink
over the CPU die (sometimes these latches fall off and people put them
back on the wrong way around: the pressure spot for these is often not
equidistant from both ends). Be very careful when pressing the latch
into place, as a slip of the screwdriver can easilly kill a motherboard.
 
Be very careful with the metal-filled paste products. I got a bit too much
on a CPU and a few weeks later the machine started acting strangely and
eventually stopped. A computer guy looked at it and noted that the paste
had run down and was shorting out come of the CPU pins. Since that I use
the white, silicone "grease".
 
When I installed my first CPU with a paste I spread it a bit thick.
CPU Temps were running at 63C idle.

Took the HSF off and cleaned it. Put a tiny teeny speck of paste on
the core, smoothed it out an refitted the HSF. The result was 57C.

This was a Duron 1.3 which seem to run hot anyway. Now I have a XP2000
and it idles at 45C and never goes over 51C under load.

The trick is to use as little as possible. Just enought to be able to
spread it over the whole core. Half a grain of rice in size (or even a
little less).

Remeber you are filling the ridges in the HSF and core.
"What? You cant see any ridges?" Thats because they are microscopic,
so you only need enough paste to fill those gaps (eg not alot of paste
needed)

HTH

Harry
 
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