Heat Sink Compound Necessary?

I want to replace the Intel stock fan on my 478 Pentium 4, because I need to
overclock heavily. Is heat sink compound needed, recommended? Thank you.

Talal Itani

Talal Itani wrote:
I want to replace the Intel stock fan on my 478 Pentium 4, because I need to
overclock heavily. Is heat sink compound needed, recommended? Thank you.

Talal Itani


You need a good thermal path from the top of the CPU, into the heatsink.
So, yes, thermal compound or a thermal pad should be used. The
thermal compound displaces air, and air is a good insulator.
Only a thin layer is required, and you don't want to use so much,
that major quantities squirt out the side of the joint.

Paul

You ABSOLUTELY have to use thermal paste or compound, or your CPU will
overheat and fry.

--

DaveW

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"Talal Itani" wrote in message
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I want to replace the Intel stock fan on my 478 Pentium 4, because I need
to overclock heavily. Is heat sink compound needed, recommended? Thank
you.

Talal Itani

You ABSOLUTELY have to use thermal paste or compound, or your CPU will
overheat and fry.

I think that's exaggerating it a little.. their CPU would certainly run
hotter than it should, but to the point of destruction ? I have my doubts..

Chris

On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 23:18:00 -0400, "Skeleton Man"
wrote:

You ABSOLUTELY have to use thermal paste or compound, or your CPU will
overheat and fry.

I think that's exaggerating it a little.. their CPU would certainly run
hotter than it should, but to the point of destruction ? I have my doubts..

Chris



It's not absolutely necessary to use thermal compound at all
either, (three?) years ago I reported on a test where I took
a ridiculous amount of time to lap a heatsink *VERY* flat
and had practically identical temps even on a flipchip
Athlon XP. Today's heat spreaders aren't as flat as the
flipchip cores bare, were, but if they were lapped very well
the result should be equally good. However, the main point
might be what was written above, "a ridiculous amount of
time", when otherwise all one has to do is spend a few
seconds applying thermal compound to achieve the same
results. Plus, you can't lap a CPU w/o voiding the
warranty.

Paul wrote:

I want to replace the Intel stock fan on my 478 Pentium 4, because I need to
overclock heavily. Is heat sink compound needed, recommended? Thank you.

You need a good thermal path from the top of the CPU, into the heatsink.
So, yes, thermal compound or a thermal pad should be used. The
thermal compound displaces air, and air is a good insulator.
Only a thin layer is required, and you don't want to use so much,
that major quantities squirt out the side of the joint.

Agreed...

--
http://www.bootdisk.com/

DaveW wrote:

You ABSOLUTELY have to use thermal paste or compound, or your CPU will
overheat and fry.

How does a Pentium 4, which has built-in thermal protection, fry,
unless you apply a torch to it?

It's not absolutely necessary to use thermal compound at all
either, (three?) years ago I reported on a test where I took
a ridiculous amount of time to lap a heatsink *VERY* flat
and had practically identical temps even on a flipchip
Athlon XP. Today's heat spreaders aren't as flat as the
flipchip cores bare, were, but if they were lapped very well
the result should be equally good.

Interesting, I've head of lapping the heatsink, but not the cpu. Guess it
makes sense to have metal to metal contact rather than metal to plastic
coating.

What is the coating on them anyway ? some kind of thermal compound or just a
protective plastic ?

However, the main point
might be what was written above, "a ridiculous amount of
time", when otherwise all one has to do is spend a few
seconds applying thermal compound to achieve the same
results. Plus, you can't lap a CPU w/o voiding the
warranty.

It would be an interesting exercise.. I doubt you could do much (if any)
harm to the heatspreader.

btw, when a temperature reading talks about cpu case, does that mean the
temperature of the heatspreader ?

Chris

On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:35:21 -0400, "Skeleton Man"
wrote:

It's not absolutely necessary to use thermal compound at all
either, (three?) years ago I reported on a test where I took
a ridiculous amount of time to lap a heatsink *VERY* flat
and had practically identical temps even on a flipchip
Athlon XP. Today's heat spreaders aren't as flat as the
flipchip cores bare, were, but if they were lapped very well
the result should be equally good.

Interesting, I've head of lapping the heatsink, but not the cpu. Guess it
makes sense to have metal to metal contact rather than metal to plastic
coating.

There's minimal lapping necessary on the flipchips, only a
slight raised area from the laser product etching on earlier
athlon XP / Palomino, none on the latter XPs unless there
were some surface irregularity. As for lapping CPUs with
heat spreaders, there were people doing it back in the
PII/Celeron era too as the Celerons in particular had a heat
spreader with the outer border raised a bit higher than the
middle.



What is the coating on them anyway ? some kind of thermal compound or just a
protective plastic ?

I don't know what the coating on them is, but immediately
below that I though it was just a silicon sheet.




However, the main point
might be what was written above, "a ridiculous amount of
time", when otherwise all one has to do is spend a few
seconds applying thermal compound to achieve the same
results. Plus, you can't lap a CPU w/o voiding the
warranty.

It would be an interesting exercise.. I doubt you could do much (if any)
harm to the heatspreader.

btw, when a temperature reading talks about cpu case, does that mean the
temperature of the heatspreader ?


It might depend on the context, normally I would think not
but that would also depend on the sink interface, IMO die
temp is a much better number to use if it's reasonably
measurable (motherboard does it).

On 23 Apr 2007 09:38:58 -0700, larry moe 'n curly
wrote:


DaveW wrote:

You ABSOLUTELY have to use thermal paste or compound, or your CPU will
overheat and fry.

How does a Pentium 4, which has built-in thermal protection, fry,
unless you apply a torch to it?


It's doubtful it would fry w/o thermal compound, but without
any heatsink it can as the die temp rate of increase on some
areas can be higher than on others, it's conducted from the
area generating heat to the rest of the die, so by the time
the thermal shutdown circuit were to respond some areas
could already be hot enough to be damaged.