athon boxed says don't use grease

  • Thread starter Thread starter Krystan Honour
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Krystan Honour

Hi there,

About to install some lovely new kit and I was going through my
athlon instructions (cause I read guarantees) and its says to use
the heatsink that came with the processor (I got the retail box)

first of all I know these are never going to be as good as copper heatsinks
but how are the athlon ones ?

Secondly it says to use pcm (phase change pads) and obviously one is
on the heatsink wanting to be used. Now I have had better experience using
grease and secondly I have some arctic silver 5 going begging.

The instructions specifically say DO NOT USE THERMAL GREASE.

Why is this, is it, as I suspect just the athlon gurantee that will go
or is this a more recent reccommendation, I didn't spot it before but then
again I haven't bought a boxed retail kit before


Krys
 
Athlon have thermal recommandation that void usage of thermal grease because
of a phenomen that graese goes liquid when reaching a certain temp...
thermal grease are always better solution but at high temp (above 100C) some
kind of grease are changing to liquid state, and this is why they recommande
using thermal pad instead of thermal grease. Using of thermal grease can
actually void AMD warranty if they have sufficient proof (yeah it's
stupid...). There is only one thermal grease recommanded (made by shintsu).
AMD really disapprouve using silver made grease because of their conductive
properties. Here I'm using Artic Ceramique, a thermal paste made of fine
particle of ceramic. It's non-conductive, easier to remove and do a nice
job (small bit better than silver 3 but a bit under silver 5).

Wizza
 
They mean the nasty white generic crap (silicon grease), arctic silver etc
aren't strictly speaking greases, they are thermal compounds. Though I
wouldn't like to bet AMD approves of these either.

The white grease has a habit of creeping and also drying out over time and
thus is likely (unless you reseat your HSF regularly) to either vanish from
between your HSF and CPU or dry out and become more of an insulator in
either case your nice CPU would be toast.

Andy H
 
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