Do I need Artic Silver?

[Gabdala]

My 1.2 tbird is on its way, along with a Volcano II. Do I need to apply artic silver on it or is it enough with the pad, if it brings? Thanx in advance.

 

[Gabdala]

Forgot to mention that I wasn't on planning on Overclocking. thanx

 

[pillage2001]

Everybody here will recommend you not to use the thermal pad but scrape it off. You can go with AS2 or any normal thermal goop should be fine as long as you're not pushing it.

 

[Richardito]

Yes, you need to use a thermal compound, whichever you prefer. Never use the thermal pad that comes with the HS. It is not re-usable and is harder to remove after you've used it.

 

[FenrisLoki3]

Stud that you?


Fen

 

[Gabdala]

Do i need to use it even if i'm not planning on reusing the HS. The reason I ask is because I just want to build this system and not have to worry about it for a couple of years. thanx

 

[MrThompson]

If you want to set your HS and forget it either accept the lower performance of the thrermal pad or use Arctic Silver. Outside of it's superior thermal properties, Arctic Silver also does not dry out over time like the generic white greases.

 

[snidy]

go with arctic silver

 

[mstudd]

The Arctic Silver definatly seems to hang in there better and it's not really that expensive, one small tube will last forever.

 

[koolhand]

Gabdala, want to split a tube of Arctic Silver with me? I just put together a 1.2 gig T-bird system a few weeks back, only used a tiny bit of the 3 g tube. $4 and I can send you the rest.

Enable your PM.

 

[baldy]

Here are some comparison temps for you, all taken with the same clock and pretty much the same ambient room temps, this is with a 1.2 266FSB tbirdy on an Iwill ka266 running @1428 for testing purposes (10.5x136), 1.97 vre.

Alpha with delta and regular arctic silver, idle 37*C, full load 47/48*C*.
MC462 with the generic AS they send, idle 31*C, full load 38/39*C*.
MC462 with ASII AND non conductive shim, idle 29*C, full load 35/36*C.

Which one would you pick???

I firmly believe that the heavier heatsinks that are coming out now ARE tilting just ever so slightly when standing vertical in the towers most of us use, the laws of physics come into play, it is called gravity. Especially with the MC462 attachment to the motherboard and the spring loaded design of the attachment bolts and the massive 80mm fan, the rubber pads aren't gonna keep the sucker flat, the slightest variance makes temps go up, the more the misalignment, well,anyway, you get my point. Just the vibration fro the fans could cause problems.

The solution is the NON CONDUCTIVE shim (I have used copper shims in the past with disasterous results on slot A cpu's, held four funerals before I figured that one out). It really keeps the heavy MC462 heatsink flat, and the temps I got while testing bear this out.

I must warn you, each processor is different and you may get different results than me. The comparisons where only presented so you could see the dramatic results I got. BTW, the Alpha PEP66 is a great cooler and works fine. The one I was using was designed for the Intel products, the shroud had to be modded and it did not set up as well for my side blowhole fans, the clip was not offset to accommodate centering of pressure on the core (I had to shim one side to get it flat), so don't look at this comparsion and think badly of Alpha's.

I used Alpha's exclusively for the past four years and still think it is a great product used properly, they just don't have the mass to handle the heat from the higher clocked CPU's we are using presently.

I highly recommend the Swifttech, the non conductive shim and ASII. You can't go wrong. I don't recommend to everyone this method of testing, I removed and replaced the motherboard more that just the three times it took to do the testing, I wanted to get real world results, ya know, while in the box and CLOSED.



baldy