newbie: Heatsink + Arctic Silver II

[Guest]

Hi All,

I'm going to be building a new system, and i need some help regarding the heatsink and cooling compound:

When you get a new heatsink, they come with a kind of heatsink compound already attached; where you have to pull off the sticky plastic tape and attach to the processor immediately. Now, i'm going to be using the Arctic Silver II thermal compund (you can get this from www.overclockers.co.uk ). So anyway, what do i do?
Do i have to pull of the sticky tape from the heatsink and apply the Arc. Silver II on top of it and then fix onto processor? OR Do i have to completely remove the ready-attached compound on the heatsink and then apply Arc. Silver II?

Also, where do you apply the compound? The heatsink or the CPU, or both??

Any help would be greatly appreciated I've built systems before, but before the heatsinks used to be already attached to processors.

Anyway, FYI the system i'm building is this:

AMD Athlon-c 1.33GHz Processor (266FSB)
Copper Shin + Arctic Silver II + Alpha FC-PAL6035MUC Heatsink
Asus A7M266 Motherboard
2X 256MB DDR2100 (Crucial)
IBM DTLA307030 (30GB)
Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS 32MB
CL SBlive! Value
etc etc.

 

[Guest]

You'll need to carefully scrape the thermal pad off the hs before you can use ASII. After you get it off, use some alcohol to clean the remaining residue from it, then you can use the ASII. As for where to apply it, there are mixed opinions... It's easiest to put it on the die itself, but when you clamp it down it squeezes out and gets on the processor. This could potentially be a problem, even though they claim it has a very low conductivity, I have heard people say it shorted out the bridges on their Tbird. If you use it sparingly, this shouldn't be a problem. Better yet, apply it to the hs to help avoid this. Just put a very thin layer (it's only meant to fill in the gaps between the cpu and the hs anyway) but just be sure to cover the area where the die touches the hs.

Be very careful with that shim... I've heard a lot more bad about them than good. Some of them can cause the hs to not come into contact with the die at all. Not only do you not get improved cooling, you'll end up burning up the cpu. There are many good shims on the market that help (somewhat) with cooling the chip down, just make sure it is in complete contact with the die. Personally I wouldn't use one, but then again, I have good cooling without it.

You'll love the a7m266, that's what I have and it's rock stable. Good luck.

"I've been called worse by better people. You can do better..."<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by OvrrDrive on 04/05/01 10:13 AM.</EM></FONT></P>