How thin is thin when it comes to thermal paste?

[maverick7]

ok i applied some as5 to a q6600 and a tuniq tower and without even ocing the temps are skyrocketing to 50c idle (ambient is 26c or so).. now when i applied the thermal paste i took a small amount ant got a credit card and made it about paper thin, maybe a bit over in some places.. but then i realized the tuniq tower was facing the wrong way (after i had already screwed it down..) sooo stupid me lifts it off then puts it right back down.. obviously i think this is the problem but im not sure..

and then other problems that are happening with my computer is that one of the fans just stopped working.. like when i boot the pc it turn on then a couple seconds later the led lights shut off as well as the fan.. and without this fan the gpu temp rises over 10 degrees.. which really makes no sense to me... because i have 12 fans in total in my case and one single fan going down should not affect a thermaltake armor's cooling ability by very much at all... and considering i had this can right where the other pci slots were if u know what i mean.. i took those little metal brackets out and just stuck a 90mm fan in there to help cooling..

but anyways the computer gets a few blue screens here and there and runs a lot slower than normal.. and the scores in 3dmark go up and down by over 500 marks without any change in anything..

help please :S

*edit- is it better to just put a rice sized piece of as5 down and then screw your heatsink right on or is it best to use a credit card like it did??

 

[maverick7]

bump

 

[dragonsprayer]

depends on the heat shink if your heat sink is not flat add more - if its falt make it as thin as possible.

use a mirror or a strait edge - i used a strait edge and hold it up to light to see if there is large gap - slide the strait edge around.

thermalright heat sinks are dished all the time
50c is not hot for a quad core they run hot - simple you stick 2 cpus in the same size box they get hot!

 

[little_scrapper]

I show this picture alot:

This was my Ninja before lapping. if your CPU and HS look like this as mine did then just put a small dab in the middle and let the pressure of the mount do the work of spreading because as you can see in my case I needed a good amount in the middle to fill the clam I had. But just know that I have applied paste in every imagineable way and it never seemed to make much difference no matter how I did it. The amount you use will most likely affect your temperatures more then how you spread it.

 

[tehlexinator]

Make sure your HS is flat. If its not, just sand it down untill it is. (Most Tuniq Tower's are not, at least the ones I have worked with weren't perfectly flat.)

Then squeeze a small line down the middle of the HS and get it on to the CPU. (Make sure to leave room at the edges for when you squish it down. The pressure will spread it out evenly for you.)

 

[gooman]

My Tuniq Tower was not perfectly flat either, but it was not terrible.

I did lap it up to only 1000 grit. Going to 2000 grit like some say to do is a bit excessive and unnecessary (although the mirror effect is cool). The key is not the mirror finish; it is to make the heat sink perfectly flat so it makes solid contact across the chip. Make sure the surface your using to lap it on is nice and flat. I put the sandpaper onto a granite countertop....it worked well. The heat sink was very flat when I was done. Idle temps at stock speed for my Q6600 were like 28C to 30C on the hottest core.

Hope this helps

 

[hertzuk]

well, when i put my thermaltake golden orb2 on my cpu, i had never done it b4, so pasted a s**tload of as5 on it, well over paper thin, right wad of the stuff!

But in my opinion, as i liek to do the cooler up dead tight, its only gonna thin the paste out anyway (admittedly probably splurging over the sides onto the cpu clamps, but i aint checked). But even with this pasting of it on, i still idle at like 30 (ish), and i have a pretty high room temp as teh sun is always on my window!

So i dont know whether you should follow my example and paste it on, as this doesnt seem the right thing to do, but maybe it shows that a little more is better than a little less?

Chris