pink gunk on the heatsink

[Guest]

Hey, I took the pink gunk off the bottom of my heatsink...

Should I *really* have done that? Does it really help much
(or at all) not to have it there? Should I buy a new heatsink?

Thanks
Patrick

 

[alphateam]

its not SUPER critical that you did, unless you have heat problems. The pink gunk is a heat condicting compound. If you are overclocking or something like that its best to have it. You can buy a tube of it that is enough to last you a life time for just a few bucks. It comes in different colors. The most common one I've seen is white.

 

[Guest]

you are better off with it but if your cpu is working fine without it don't worry too much and if it does become a problem buy some and put it back on ....

M

UK Prices are <font color=red>toooooooooo</font color=red> high , keep competition going to bring em down

 

[Guest]

damn... i thought i was helping thermal conductivity by doing that... heheh.

i'll be running an athlon 1.2, maybe trying to overclock a
little. it's a global win fop 32. anybody know if this will make me much more likely to have heat problems?

 

[HolyGrenade]

Very Likely.

Buy some more gunk!

... I mean some Thermal Paste... I recommend Arctic Silver 2.

 

[Guest]

You pretty much need the phase changing compound if you're going to have a 1.2ghz and OC it. I don't know that you can get anymore phase changing compound without buying a new fop. Get some silver conductive greese instead. I've got a fop32 as well and added some circuitworks conductive greese. For me, I could get it locally and it was cheaper than artic silver. Artic silver is a bit better, for if you want that last degree C of cooling.

I can understand why you ripped the phase changing compound off, it looks thick and ineffective. What happens is when it gets heated up from the cpu (and the pressure from the clamp) it "melts" around the processor providing a very effective seal. However it's not quite as good as silver conductive grease due to the limits of the material.

BTW: If you rip the phase changing material off your heatsink after the compound has already melted, you should replace it. You can get away with it, but with a higher clocked or OCed athlon it's not smart.

 

[Tempus]

You bought silver <b>conductive</b> grease!? A major strongpoint of Artic Silver is that it is conductively negligable. I don't even think the stuff you bought is thermal grease, more likely similar to the conductive pen I used to unlock my athlon. Even if it is meant for use as thermal grease, you don't want it to be conductive!

- "That's no moon, it's Rambus!"

 

[slvr_phoenix]

There is more than one type of conductivity. Specifically in reference to thermal paste there is electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity.

You better darn well hope that the paste you use is thermally conductive, otherwise you might have well just used electrical tape instead.

So in that respect, I do believe ANY thermal paste purchased is conductive.

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.

 

[Guest]

Wow, sounds like Tom's HW needs to do an article about thermal compounds and the like. Some people are not knowledgeable about this issue. I know I'm not.

But then again I'm a newbie. (for now!)

 

[Guest]

Don't worry, it's thermally AND electrically conductive. While the second quality is not 100% desirable it's no big deal. Basically it's micro-bits of silver with some silicon oil. Silicon oil is electically non-conductive and some people who are REALLY into OCing will submurge their MB and processor in silicon oil. Works nicely, this technique is used with transformers.

Artic silver is conductive greese as well but somehow they managed to reduce the eletrical conductivity. Actually I probably could have used this stuff on my athlon instead of a pen. That is actually one of its intended purposes. Except my cpu speed and voltage is selected by the pen as well so it proabably would be a pain in the ass. You can also use the stuff as a lubricent.

 

[slvr_phoenix]

It's really pretty simple though.

Electricity is when an electron passes from one atom/molecule to another. This is electrical conduction. Static electricity is a perfect example. You preferably want a thermal paste that doesn't conduct electricity well because the last thing a CPU needs is too much electricity.

Likewise, thermal conduction is when energy stored as heat passes from one atom/molecule to another. Such as if you leave a penny out in the sun and go to pick it up, it burns you. Why? Because it is conducting it's stored heat into your skin.

Thermal conductivity is the whole point of that heat sink. It tries to take the excess heat from the CPU chip and pull it away into the heat sink. Then the air flow (usually from a fan on the heat sink) conducts the heat into the air where it gets carried away, leaving the CPU at a cooler temperature than it used to be.

So the more conductive you can make the heat sink, the more heat gets pulled away from your CPU.

Thermal paste and other such things are made to improve this thermal conductivity between the CPU and the heat sink. Because the metal heat sink and the silicon CPU have microscopic sized warps in them, it isn't in a perfect 100% connection to the CPU. And that results in a less than ideal heat transfer.

What thermal paste does is it fills in those tiny warps to give the heat sink a much better connection to the CPU. This results in more heat being transered away from the CPU, which gives you a cooler chip.

If you don't use something to fill in these tiny gaps, the chip will run hotter. In some cases with very hot chips like the T-Birds, this can result in bad things happening.

So it's always a good idea to use something like a thermal paste. It's just safer that way.

The ideal properties of a thermal paste are that it can melt and/or squish to fill in those little holes, it can conduct heat easily, and it doesn't conduct electricity easily. Arctic Silver is a good example of this. The grease in it doesn't conduct electricity well, but it doesn't impede heat conduction much. And silver is an excellent conductor of heat.

And, as a side note, if you use too much paste it will actually end up blocking the connection to the chip instead of improving it because grease isn't as good at conducting heat as metal is, so you want as much of a connection with the actual heat sink itself as possible. You really only want just enough paste to fill in those microscopic gaps but not to block any connection to the heat sink.

And if you use too much it can melt and drip and run all over, which is icky.

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.

 

[Guest]

To be honest with you there's not a lot to talk about regarding thermal compounds. You can benchmark how effective they are and talk about the pros and cons of each. All you need to know is the different types of materials out there. The essentials are this: If you've got low end cooling, don't worry about it, it's doing its job already. If you have a higher-end solution (alpha or globwin) it comes with phase changing compound. This is good stuff but it's a one application deal. If you're a freak or have ripped your heatsink off, get some artic silver (or some other kind of conductive greese). Make sure you cover the core with as thin a layer as possible and don't glob it on. Using your finger to smear on a thin layer is fine, but again if you're a freak, the greese from your finger can leave marks on the processor effecting the conductivity. For these fokes use an edge of some sort. Conductive tape is useless. If you've got a lower-end product like a coolermaster, it's got a conductive pad and will do it's job fine without intervension. Any heatsink/fan can have it's performance enhanced by removing the initial contact material and replacing with silver conductive greese (artic silver). In high end coolers you don't really need to do this.

The basic idea is this: There are big bumps on the processor core eg. the etched in lettering and small bumps and the microscopic level. You want to fill in these bumps to effectively increase the surface area in contact with the heatsink (which also has microscopic bumps).

 

[Guest]

yeah, i have the arctic silver stuff, which i'm planning to use in place of the pink gunk. (i don't have version 2, though, because i wasn't aware of it when i bought it)

 

[Guest]

hey ya'll

take a look here:
http://www.thecardcooler.com/shopcart/Misc./misc.html

and scroll down to the Arctic Silver II Thermal Paste. That stuff is great. You only need a little tiny bit, so the tube will last forever.



Those who do not know, speak. Those who are silent, know.