On Saturday 15 April 2006 07:56 pm, Vaughn Treude kindly wrote: > A question for the build-it-yourselfers out there: > > It seems I always have trouble with heat when reinstalling a CPU. Since > it's a used heatsink I have to put on new thermal compound. I bought a > tube of Arctic Alumina thermal grease and followed the instructions from > the company's website as closely as I possibly could. Still, the BIOS > says that the CPU (an AMD 2600+ or something similar) is heating up to > 60 degrees C. Assuming the BIOS is right, I did something wrong. I've > already redone this twice. This is the heatsink that came with the > CPU. And yes, I cleaned the old thermal pad off the heatsink with > carburetor cleaner as recommended. The problems, as I see it, are: > > 1. It's extremely hard to get the thermal grease in a thin even layer. > The directions say you can use a razor blade or a clean credit card. > I've tried both. I never get the layer quite even and if I try to fix > it, I always make it worse, producing gaps and whatnot. > > 2. The directions say you shouldn't twist or slide the heatsink when > mating it down on the processor. Makes sense, but with those tiny, tiny > little plastic nubs on the sides of the CPU socket, it's very hard to > mate that with the heatsink's mounting hardware exactly right the first > time. Seems like it's always a millimeter or two off. Unless I want to > take it off and reapply the goop, and do this about 50 times in > succession, I need to slide the heatsink over a tiny bit. > > Has anybody had this kind of trouble, or am I some kind of idiot? Is it > better to just by a new heating with that meltable thermal pad on it? > > Vaughn > Is this an AMD CPU? What kind of system is it, e.g. socket A, or what? It's been a while since I had to put on a heatsink but I've built a number of AMD socket A machines, and the stock heatsinks that came with the CPU were always junk- loud and inefficient. But even so, this sounds hotter than normal. The only time I've ever had one get hot like that, it wasn't mounted flush with the board. I had tried using a shim to keep it from cracking upon mounting, and the shim made it not fit right. There was actually an air gap under half of it. Siri Amrit -- Tigerflag Natural Perfumery, LLC www.tigerflag.com --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss