I've done this many (many) times, and have had no problems.  I have not 
been as meticulous as you in this endeavor, so maybe I'm lucky?

I scraped it off from both the die and the heat sink using the green 
plastic card that came with the compound, wiped it off using a paper 
towel, then put a small amount (comparable to what I scraped off) in the 
center of the die, smear it around with a toothpick and reattached the 
heat sink.  My thought is the force from the spring clips is going to 
make the grease spread out and become thin.

Not very scientific, but it has worked so far.

What I have discovered over the years is the fan/heat sink that comes 
with the retail CPU boxes are inadequate.  I have been forced to upgrade 
the coolers for every CPU I've installed in the last 5 years.

My latest joy is the fanless heat pipe cooler - it does as good of a job 
as the the monster-sized planet coolers that I've used before and makes 
no noise whatsoever.  I have one with three heat pipes and 6 cooling 
towers cooling an AMD Athelon XP 2400+.  Works quite well - it keeps the 
CPU at 41C even while the OS is running at a load average of 0.50.

George Toft, CISSP, MSIS
My IT Department
www.myITaz.com
480-544-1067

In business, there are always problems.  It's how they are handled
that makes a difference.  Are you happy with your IT Manager?


Vaughn Treude 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
> 
> 
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