Talal said:I want to replace the Intel stock fan on my 478 Pentium 4, because I need to
overclock heavily. Is heat sink compound needed, recommended? Thank you.
Talal Itani
overheat and fry.
I think that's exaggerating it a little.. their CPU would certainly run
hotter than it should, but to the point of destruction ? I have my doubts..
Chris
Paul said:You need a good thermal path from the top of the CPU, into the heatsink.
So, yes, thermal compound or a thermal pad should be used. The
thermal compound displaces air, and air is a good insulator.
Only a thin layer is required, and you don't want to use so much,
that major quantities squirt out the side of the joint.
DaveW said:You ABSOLUTELY have to use thermal paste or compound, or your CPU will
overheat and fry.
either, (three?) years ago I reported on a test where I took
a ridiculous amount of time to lap a heatsink *VERY* flat
and had practically identical temps even on a flipchip
Athlon XP. Today's heat spreaders aren't as flat as the
flipchip cores bare, were, but if they were lapped very well
the result should be equally good.
However, the main point
might be what was written above, "a ridiculous amount of
time", when otherwise all one has to do is spend a few
seconds applying thermal compound to achieve the same
results. Plus, you can't lap a CPU w/o voiding the
warranty.
Interesting, I've head of lapping the heatsink, but not the cpu. Guess it
makes sense to have metal to metal contact rather than metal to plastic
coating.
What is the coating on them anyway ? some kind of thermal compound or just a
protective plastic ?
It would be an interesting exercise.. I doubt you could do much (if any)
harm to the heatspreader.
btw, when a temperature reading talks about cpu case, does that mean the
temperature of the heatspreader ?
How does a Pentium 4, which has built-in thermal protection, fry,
unless you apply a torch to it?
kony said:There's minimal lapping necessary on the flipchips, only a
slight raised area from the laser product etching on earlier
athlon XP / Palomino, none on the latter XPs unless there
were some surface irregularity. As for lapping CPUs with
heat spreaders, there were people doing it back in the
PII/Celeron era too as the Celerons in particular had a heat
spreader with the outer border raised a bit higher than the
middle.
kony said:It's doubtful it would fry w/o thermal compound, but without
any heatsink it can as the die temp rate of increase on some
areas can be higher than on others, it's conducted from the
area generating heat to the rest of the die, so by the time
the thermal shutdown circuit were to respond some areas
could already be hot enough to be damaged.
larry said:Do you remember this test done by Tom's Hardware back in 2001, where
they yanked the heatsinks off running Athlons and Pentiums?
www.tomshardware.com/2001/09/17/hot_spot/
Both the Pentium III and 4 survived intact, but both Athlons fried.
AMD modified a mobo to prevent this, and Asus/Asrock later claimed
that their Socket A mobos would protect the CPU against any such
failure (but I haven't verified that witn my Asrock).
The only reasons I bought a Pentium 4 instead instead of a faster AMD
CPU was because the latter could burn up and its heatsink mounting
wasn't that solid.
Do you remember this test done by Tom's Hardware back in 2001, where
they yanked the heatsinks off running Athlons and Pentiums?
www.tomshardware.com/2001/09/17/hot_spot/
Both the Pentium III and 4 survived intact, but both Athlons fried.
AMD modified a mobo to prevent this, and Asus/Asrock later claimed
that their Socket A mobos would protect the CPU against any such
failure (but I haven't verified that witn my Asrock).
The only reasons I bought a Pentium 4 instead instead of a faster AMD
CPU was because the latter could burn up and its heatsink mounting
wasn't that solid.
larry said:How does a Pentium 4, which has built-in thermal protection, fry,
unless you apply a torch to it?