'That CPU thermal paste stuff'-thread (1 Viewer)

[Jay H]

Well, if you've seen my 'Ugg, new motherboard woes' thread then you know that I'm attempting to return the motherboard and the RAM and get a replacement. To do that, I had to take out the AMD Athlon CPU that's in the motherboard right now on a Socket 436. Now, the weirdness that it is, I can't just release the heatsink from the socket and pull up the lever to release the chip itself. The heat sink sits on top of that lever so you can't move it up. [sarcasm] Gee, great design guys, I hope somebody bought lunch for the genius who designed that one [/sarcasm]
Anyway, I had to remove the heatsink to lift the lever and now I have an Athlon CPU and a HSF apart. Now, if you're familiar with AMD CPU HSFs (name that acronym for $100 ), it comes with a glue/gum thing that you remove a tape and stick it on top of the little chip inside the CPU. Of course, now that the tape is pulled, I'm not sure how effective it would be once reapplied. I'm thinking of buying the smallest amount of the thermal paste kind of thing when I get a new mobo and try a new one? Do they sell such a thing in say a CompUSA, it doesn't seem like it would be a "hot seller" so to speak, could I bribe the tech guys and ask for a swig? Do you think it's good to get something like that when you're changing CPUs, don't want the CPU to explode I guess and it's probably worth a few dollars if I ever get a working machine for it not to melt when I'm 5 hours into destroying the Russians in Civ III.
Jay

 

[brentl]

I wouldn't chance NOT getting it. Get Arctic Silver, it's great stuff.
A tube that will do 1 CPU is about $5 canadian.
Good luck buddy!
That's why I bought an MSI mobo
Brent L
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[Carlo_M]

I think conventional wisdom on the Athlons is to clean the old gun stuff off with a Q-tip and mild solvent (look around and see what's recommended, probably alcohol since it evaporates) and then reapply the thermal paste. And yes, all my friends who are PC nuts have that Arctic Silver stuff so there's got to be something to that.

 

[Jay H]

Well, my old Shuttle HOT-637P was/is great, stable, no problems once I got fast enough RAM. I was getting IPFs for awhile when I first setit up, but it turned out to be RAM that was too slow. Shuttle's been around for a LONG time and their boards are fairly cheap. I am not an overclocker so stability is what I'm after, not interested in voltage changes and jumperless bios, although the AK31a and probably many new boards are jumperless, besides the most basic of functions...
Wondering if I should of just returned the CPU too, hell then I'd get a new one and damm the artic silver stuff.... Do they sell that at CompUSA? Hate to get gouged for shipping on something so damm puny. Death to etailers who make huge profits on shipping.
Jay

 

[Bill Catherall]

I've seen Arctic Silver at Best Buy. But the BB price was more expensive than the price + shipping from newegg.com.
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Bill

 

[Andrew Pratt]

before you spend the extra on silver thermal paste there was a review done on many different kinds of thermal pastes incl. arctic silver and the tests showed there was basically no benefit to having silver vs the generic thermal pastes...
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