Will Thermal Adhesive Work for CPU Heatsink?

[peterno3]

I did something dumb yesterday. I accidentally dislodged my CPUs heatsink from the CPU, panicked, and fixed it with the only TIM i had around, some thermal adhesive.
How bad was this? Does it just mean my heat sink and CPU aren't going to be coming apart any time soon but will continue to work fine, or should i start shopping for replacement components now?

 

[boosted1g]

Well without listing what thermal ahesive you used there is no way for us to tell you if it is sufficient for your CPU.

I would strongly error on the side of caution and say it is not sufficient.

You can try taking a thin string or razor blade and see if you can get it between the CPU and Heat sink.

If this is intel then the clamp holding the CPU down could actually help you get enough leverage to get the heatsink sepereated from the CPU.
If this is AMD then if you cant get the heatsink seperated with string/razor blade then you are going to have some very bent and damaged pins.

And yes, that was really really dumb. Minor inconvinence of not having a PC for a couple days to get proper thermal paste vs not having a pc for a while to replace cpu, fan, and possiby motherbaord (which then means reinstalling windows and all your programs as well).

 

[peterno3]

Sorry, the adhesive i used is Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive 5g. And it is an intel CPU (i5-3570) with the stock fan

 

[boosted1g]

Eck a two part "epoxy like" solution.

It seems to break down a little bit at freezing temps.
First and foremost, undo the plastic fan clips holding it to the motherboard.
Take some canned air and aim the straw hose at the gap between the cpu/heatsink (if you dont have the straw thing then get a new can that has it).

This may allow you to get it seperated then hopefully with some 92% or better rubbing alcohal and you can remove it.

 

[peterno3]

Great, thanks for the tip. I'll try that out.

Just curious though, the adhesive is intended for heat sinks; is there a reason it wouldn't work for a CPU heatsink? Is the thermal conductivity somehow lowered by the epoxy in it? Or is the only issue that it is semi-permanent, in which case is there a reason to remove it now as opposed to waiting until i need to remove it?

 

[boosted1g]

I guess it depends on how you are looking at it.

The ahessive is not tested/designed for CPU use so the only safe assumption is that it will not work.
Now on the hand you also have a large chance of damaging CPU removing it.

So if the mindset is the CPU is 80% chance going to be damaged thermally or 50% chance damage removal then removal is "safer"; while if you see removal as 90% + chance of damage then seeing how the adhesive does is the "safer" option.

I guess you can turn it on and download hardware monitor and watch tems and see what happens, hopefully mothebroard will autoshutdown before cpu is damaged.