Thermaltake Big Typhoon on Opteron 170 (Help)

[Clarity]

I have an AMD Opteron 170, and I've got a Thermaltake Big Typhoon on it. So far, it's wobbly due to the thermal grease. I have a few questions:

Is being a tiny bit wobbly okay? The cooler is for K8, and the Opteron 170 is a K8 architecture right?

Also, how much thermal grease should I have put on the CPU cover? I used 1 BB at first, but then used another BB becuase i couldn't get it to cover the whole die with the plastic thing the grease came in. After a bit, I used my finger to spread the grease (the plastic sucked). Was using my finger bad? After that, I installed the heat sink, took it off again (installed it wrong), and in that time I saw the grease had smoothed out. It looked nice, and I just installed it HSF right over again.

Should I removed the HSF and take some grease away, or is it fine. The fit has like a .5 mm movement when I twist it. Are my screws in too loose?

Thanks for all your help.

 

[baracuda73]

using your finger very bad. The paste picks up the oils from your skin and basicly kill the termal transfer properties of the paste. you should be able to get that big typhoon tight i have the same fan an ii have had it tight on 2 different mobos.

 

[Sonic_Reducer]

well i don't know about that cooler very weel i'm just leaving some advice, don't use you fingers spreading the thermal paste, and don't use too much thermal grease it block the thermal transfer it's bad, just use an old credit card or something like that clean it with some alcool it's the best , you should use a fine layer of thermal grease just to avoid direct contact between the chip and the cooler. that's the best way i think, that's how i use it.

 

[spontayo]

This is a quote from Arctic Silver's website: "Our testing has shown that this method minimizes the possibility of air bubbles and voids in the thermal interface between the heat spreader and the heatsink. Since the vast majority of the heat from the core travels directly through the heat spreader, it is more important to have a good interface directly above the actual CPU core than it is to have the heat spreader covered with compound from corner to corner."

http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm