thermal paste?

i have a 3.06 ht... and i jsut cleaned off my old HSF.. should i pu tthermal paste on it b4 i put i tback toegther? is that stuff necessary or jsut helps?

You really should not overlook this important aspect....your cpu temps will suffer..I suggest either artic silver III for advanced users and artic alumina for people who do not plan to overclock etc and arent experienced since the alumina isnt electrically conductive

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Thermal paste, or at least a replacement thermal pad, is an absolute necessity.

The goal is to provide an air-free contact between the bottom of the heat sink and the top of the chip (or transistor or module, etc.). Any air-space between the hot plate on your CPU and the base of the heatsink, even a few thousandths of an inch will significanly reduce the ability of the heat sink to draw heat off the hot plate and could result in a damaged or trashed CPU.

Thermal greases provide two things... First they block out all air from between the hot plate and the heat sink. Second, they are formulated to be relatively good conductors of heat, in and of themselves.

On AMD systems (for example) I've seen just how much difference thermal grease makes... No grease (i.e. a bare metal to bare metal contact) usually results in temperatures in the 70c range, which is getting dangerously close to AMD's 90c self-destruct point. A little dab of thermal paste the size of a match head, properly applied, can bring that temperature down as much as 20 or 30 degrees.

If you have a Radio Shack store in your area, they sell a reasonably good heat sink grease at a bargain price. One of the small tubes will do a dozen or more CPUs... It's only $4.49 in Canada, about $3.00 in the US.

Also, most computer stores have this stuff in stock, from various makers and (unfortunately) at a wide range of prices.

Application, no matter the brand, is the same as for Arctic Silver and the instructions are here:
<A HREF="http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm" target="_new">http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm</A>



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