Thermal Grease

[Hateslife]

I can't stop worrying about the HSF and its installation; It consumes my thoughts, day and night.

1. What's the worst that could happen if I put on too much grease?

2. Does the grease conduct heat better than the metal-to-cpu touching directly(That is, in a perfect world, in which the heatsink bottom and cpu core surface are perfectly shaped to the atomic level)

2. Is it a really bad thing to get grease on the ceramic?

I'm going to go nuts.

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Athlon 1.4ghz, Epox 8K7A+, 512mb Crucial PC2100, Elsa Gladiac 920, Hercules Game Theatre XP, Maxtor 40gb, Creative Encore 12x, HP 9310i 10x4x32, 3com & Netgear NICs

[Mandorallen of Molynnr]

Originally posted by Hateslife:
I can't stop worrying about the HSF and its installation; It consumes my thoughts, day and night.

1. What's the worst that could happen if I put on too much grease?


It can insulate your CPU and minimise the effects of the heatsink, thereby raising your temps a lot.


2. Does the grease conduct heat better than the metal-to-cpu touching directly(That is, in a perfect world, in which the heatsink bottom and cpu core surface are perfectly shaped to the atomic level)


I'm not 100% sure, but I'd say that perfect world scenario would be much better than any possible arctic silver scenario found today.


2. Is it a really bad thing to get grease on the ceramic?


No, unless you hate mess. You can always clean the stuff off.


[This message has been edited by Mandorallen of Molynnr (edited July 10, 2001).]

[krazie662]

Don't stress over it too much dude. If you mess up, you can clean off the paste and reapply

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My Rig (http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=7156)

[hobbes2112]

After much trial and error I found out that for the pastes I have used a non-polar solvent like Naptha (silver polish a.k.a Zippo fluid) will clean everything right off. IF you are really really worried you can use thermal pads...but they are not as good.

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[SGC Moderate Member] (http://www.sharkyforums.com/ubb/Forum17/HTML/005187.html)