How much thermal paste is "sufficient"?

[daan]

I've just got a new processor and heatsink. The heatsink has arrived, the AMD XP 3000+ has just been posted. The instruction manual on the heatsink says to coat the processor with "sufficient" thermal paste. How much is that?

Can you put too much on? And I don't want to use too little.

I'm assuming I just spread it evenly of the Athlon about 1mm thick?

 

[emad]

enough to cover the core - nice and thick but not enough that it'll spread all over the place when you stick the heat sink on. In general, more is better but so much that it's messy is bad.

 

[Carl.]

This might help (with pics):

Processor

 

[Jugend]

Afaik.. keep it thin, 1mm sounds too much, but most important, keep the paste area flat to avoid bubbles.

 

[daan]

Thanks guys. Great link jpm

 

[Matrixhasu77]

This is a little off-topic but.... I just bought and received a new motherboard(DFI's LANPARTY NFII Ultra B, very nice) and am going to migrate my system over to it. My question is whether or not I need to clean my cpu and heatsink of the thermal paste I have on it now and reapply it or can I just drop the heatsink and cpu onto the motherboard? I asked a friend of mine and he said that I could but I'm not quite sure yet.

 

[Carl.]

It's safer to reapply it, this way you'll be sure that the contact is even, especially if you have an Athlon processor, which produces a lot of heat.

If you want to have a look at how fast an athlon cpu toast without an heatsink, here is a video (third test):

Toasted

 

[phreakypat]

AMD chip

I think I'll stick with Intel. Costs a little more, but at least if I happen to mess up putting the heatsink it'll give me another chance.

 

[Carl.]

Since this video, AMD and motherboard manufacturer included better overheat protection to prevent this from happening... but AMD in general tend to generate a lot of heat, so you must make sure you have a good cpu fan an enough airflow throug the case... (mine is a bit noisy because of this )

But for every other aspects, AMD chips beats intel on price/performance ratio... and they just claimed the crown for the high-end segment, with their Athlon64 FX-53... so for my personal computers, unless Intel does a significant price cut, I'll stick with AMD

 

[emad]

Originally posted by jpmontoya
Since this video, AMD and motherboard manufacturer included better overheat protection to prevent this from happening... but AMD in general tend to generate a lot of heat, so you must make sure you have a good cpu fan an enough airflow throug the case... (mine is a bit noisy because of this )

they generate a lot of heat, but the manufacturers make heat sinks and fan combos more than capable of handling that. Take my rig into consideration. I've got an ultra-silent 2500 rpm heat sink fan cooling my first gen athlonxp 1900+, no case fans and my average temperature is 45 degrees celcius (48 under high stress) - that's just 20-25 degrees above the temperature of the room it's located in.

in comparison to the first gen heat sinks, the old ones used aluminum- not copper (better cooling). The new ones also have a larger, quieter fan included. The real issue was that AMD skimped on oem cooling equipment back in the beginning...the hot core was also a problem but not so noticeable. Especially now since AMD has fixed that as well

 

[Carl.]

Originally posted by emad
in comparison to the first gen heat sinks, the old ones used aluminum- not copper (better cooling). The new ones also have a larger, quieter fan included. The real issue was that AMD skimped on oem cooling equipment back in the beginning...the hot core was also a problem but not so noticeable. Especially now since AMD has fixed that as well [/B]

I agree, except for quieter fan... my 2600XP oem cooler was almost as quiet as an hairdryer, and a quiet low-rpm fan is easier to find for an intel CPU than an AMD at hight frequencies.

I usually don't monitor temperature in my systems, but at the office we have a dual Athlon MP 1900+ server that wouldn't last long without its four case fans, the temperature quickly raised above 75 degrees celsius...

What brand/model of cooler are you using? I changed it twice to get a quieter system but I'm not satisfied yet... i'm also thinking about buying an accoustic material kit from AcoustiPack to solve this.

 

[emad]

Thermaltake SilentBoost - one of the best silenced ones for Socket A on the market (if not the best)

Zalmann makes good stuff for the new athlon chips but none of us at bytesector.com have one yet that we could test them out.

here's my complete review of it. I only spent a few days testing. Had I been given an extra week or 2, I would have given it a higher score
http://www.bytesector.com/data/bs-article.asp?ID=195

 

[Carl.]

Thanks, nice review and site! 👍

 

[daan]

Originally posted by emad
Thermaltake SilentBoost - one of the best silenced ones for Socket A on the market (if not the best)

The one I've got is a Thermaltake Volcano 12 for XP upto 3400+. Is that any good?

 

[Cobraboy]

Originally posted by daan
The one I've got is a Thermaltake Volcano 12 for XP upto 3400+. Is that any good?

****ing awesome

Keeps my overclocked (2.3Ghz) 2500+ stable at 30°C idle and never rises about 55°C @ full load.

I love copper .

 

[daan]

Nice.

I suppose I should've asked all this before I bought the stuff!

 

[2ez2KiLL]

Hmm.. The arctic silver 5 thermal silver compound works with thermaltake volcano 12 right?

 

[emad]

Any thermal compound works. I personally prefer the Arctic Silver Ceramique - it offers slightly better cooling than anything else out there right now.

 

[daan]

OK. Got it running. I must have put "sufficient" paste on 'cos it's not blown up..... yet!

The Athlon XP 3000+ is sitting at 49C now. That seems to be a bit high compared to Cobraboy's, although the processor fan is turned down ATM.

 

[VIPFREAK]

Hey daan does that program work for laptops too? and is stuff like changing the fan speed controllable? thanks

 

[daan]

Originally posted by VipFREAK
Hey daan does that program work for laptops too?

No idea, maybe someone else will know. Emad? I think it depends on the mother board and the CPU.

Originally posted by VipFREAK
and is stuff like changing the fan speed controllable?

The CPU fan goes from 3000 to over 5000rpm. I can control the PSU fan too.

 

[emad]

It's for gigabyte mobos...check with your motherboard manufacturer to see if they have something similar...

My MSI Came with something similar but I ended up never using it.

 

[VIPFREAK]

Thanks guys, Where did you get this program from?

 

[daan]

It was on the CD that came with the motherboard.

I'm not using it to overclock, I'm just getting it to check temps.

 

[VIPFREAK]

yeah I wasn't planning on fooling around with it but I thought it might be cool to see the temp and control the fans to keep it cool. If it came with the motherboard it's probably a lost cause for me to find it or get it. I've tried this kinda thing before without any luck. Thanks for your help though.

 

[emad]

ah, if u want to see temperatures, i've got several apps:
hardware monitor (30 day trial)
http://www.hmonitor.com/

Motherboard Monitor (very complex to set up but free and better results)
http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

 

[VIPFREAK]

Cool thanks Emad 👍

 

[Cobraboy]

I use Motherboard Monitor 5 for my temperature and fan monitoring:

As you can see I have SETI@Home running so my cpu load is at 100%