Using Artic Silver 5 on a stock AMD cooler?

second_exodous

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Aug 6, 2009
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I was wondering if anyone knew if it is possible to take off the thermal pad stuff on a stock CPU cooler and use Artic Silver 5. I went all out and got a AMD Phenom II X4 Processor 955 (3.2GHz) AM3 Black Edition but held off on a CPU cooler for the time being. I'm not planning on overclocking right away, just leaving it at default speeds for now, but am a little concerned about the stock cooler. I found some pictures of it and it is a lot better than the aluminum stock coolers from last time I built a computer (7 years ago) so I wasn't too worried, but still am wondering if I could take that pad off and put some real thermal grease on. I fixed my notebook a while back and still have almost all of the 3.5 gram tube of Artic Silver 5. Will it help that much if I do replace it? I remember looking at benchmarks done with it back in the day and it helped quite a bit, hence the reason I got it to fix my notebook.

Thanx,
Stan
 

dokk2

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For what it is worth,,I always replace the supplied TIM with AC5..no point to having a BE edition if your are not going to experiment,after all all you have to do is up the multiplier a little,,Eh what??...:)
 

smithereen

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That stock cooler is *loud*. Effective, but loud. I would leave the stock pad on if you aren't confident you can apply the thermal compound perfectly, you might do more harm than good. But it is definitely possible. Why would buy a Black Edition if you don't have a bid heatsink, though?
 

second_exodous

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Well, I'm not decided on water cooling or fan cooling yet, so I'm going to use the stock cooler for now. When I decide on a cooler and actually get it I'll OC. Also, I have an old water cooling rig in storage and need to take the time to dig it out, I'm sure I will either need to get a new water block or modify it.

It looks like water cooling doesn't work as well as air cool anymore. Then I found an Ion Cooler that looks fun to make, so yeah, I'm undecided. If my processor burns up while I study my options then it will be because of the stock cooler and covered by AMD.

Oh, and one more question, is the AM2, AM2+, and AM3 coolers all the same, i.e. when I search for processor coolers for a AM3 processor on newegg I get 4 results, but AM2/AM2+ gets a ton of results. Is AM3 new so companies haven't put it on on the old coolers so you can you use a AM2+ cooler for a AM3 chip or are they different?