Quote: Original post by Sneftel
One mistake a lot of people make when applying heatsinks is to use TOO FRIGGIN' MUCH THERMAL PASTE, which greatly reduces heat transfer. If you used more than about a pinhead-sized amount, take the heatsink off, wipe all the thermal paste off the heatsink (but not off the CPU), and put it back on. Chances are you'll see a marked improvement.

That's very true. To get the thermal paste off, first wash your hands to remove any oils. Use rubbing alcohol and a lint-free cloth to carefully remove the paste. Now put about a rice-sized drop of thermal paste right in the center of the CPU. Do NOT spread it around -- putting on the heat sink will spread it evenly.

Yes, CPUs are very sensitive to any lint, oils, or too much thermal compound.

Find a good online tutorial about how to install a heatsink, one with plenty of pictures. I believe the manufacturer of arctic silver has one on their website actually.

When I re-applied the heatsink, I went to the arctic silver website for instructions and it told me to put a line of it down the cpu, so that is what I did. Out of everyone I have asked or read about, I can't get a consistent answer on how to apply thermal compound. It seems evenly divided on: putting on a bb sized drop, putting a line down the middle, smearing it all around with a credit card or something. But I followed the arctic silver website and here I am. Also are you sure the max heat for those cpus are around 60c? I thought they were a lot higher since in my bios the fan was set to come on full power when it hit 70c. However the first thing I did was turn off smart fan and run it at 100% all the time.

Quote: Original post by 3fast3furious
When I re-applied the heatsink, I went to the arctic silver website for instructions and it told me to put a line of it down the cpu, so that is what I did. Out of everyone I have asked or read about, I can't get a consistent answer on how to apply thermal compound. It seems evenly divided on: putting on a bb sized drop, putting a line down the middle, smearing it all around with a credit card or something. But I followed the arctic silver website and here I am. Also are you sure the max heat for those cpus are around 60c? I thought they were a lot higher since in my bios the fan was set to come on full power when it hit 70c. However the first thing I did was turn off smart fan and run it at 100% all the time.

Follow AS's instructions (which is what you did, which is good [wink]). No one can give you better instructions to something than the person/company who makes it [smile]

<dumbass>Did you run Orthos (or dual prime95)?</dumbass>
Nevermind, I see you'll try it when you get home [grin].

Ok, I went home for lunch, and I ran Orthos for 1 minute. That is right, ONE minute, and I monitored temperatures via nVidia Monitor, and at the 1 minute mark the cpu temp was at 60c so I stopped it. Should I buy a new heat sink or try to re apply again?

Quote: Original post by 3fast3furious
Ok, I went home for lunch, and I ran Orthos for 1 minute. That is right, ONE minute, and I monitored temperatures via nVidia Monitor, and at the 1 minute mark the cpu temp was at 60c so I stopped it. Should I buy a new heat sink or try to re apply again?

Wow. That is most definitely NOT good.

Before we jump to conclusions, go into BIOS and check that it's not over-clocked/over-volted (maybe the motherboard didn't detect it correctly or something).

1) Are you 100% confident that you applied the thermal paste correctly? If not, try to do it again (clean it with some extremely pure alcohol, 99%).

2) Is the heatsink making contact with the CPU? This may sound kinda stupid, but when you take the heatsink off, see how well spread the thermal paste is (and how thick it is). If it's thick and/or not spread well, then your heatsink never made "perfect" contact. It has to be seated tightly (just don't break anything [wink]).

3) I hate to say it, but there's a possibility your chip is defective. Either your cores themselves are defective or the heatspreader on the chip is not making [good] contact with the cores... Not sure what you'd do in this case (you know, besides getting a new processor).

Has anyone used PC wizard? I am using it right now to monitor the temperatures as well as nTune and it is giving me the temperatures of both cores and they are actually 5c apart from eachother. One core is regestering in at 36c and the other is coming in at 41c. Does this mean my heatsink is not seated properly?(hopefully), or that the cpu heatspreader is all messed?

That actually brings up a good point... You say you've got a stock Heatsink, most of which come with thermal-pads (or a thick layer of thermal grease) applied. How did you go about removing/cleaning it off before you applied your Arctic Silver?

How does the grease look when you pull the heatsink off? If its applied well it should cover the top of the CPU entirely and it should be very thin. The purpose of thermal compound is not to stick the heatsink to the CPU, or to sit between it. its purpose is to fill the minute flaws in the otherwise-smooth surfaces.

Also, as has been said, you won't see your settled temps for possibly as much as 2 weeks, maybe even longer. It takes time, and several heat-cool cycles for the compound to spread and work its way into those flaws before you see its full effect. As it is, your temps seem a tad high, but are well within safe tolerances, so if you've applied the compound to the best of your knowledge and ability, its probably better at this point to not touch it for awhile and see how it settles over the coming weeks. Your processor has built-in protections against overheating, so there's no worry that your CPU will be fried -- although I would suggest you double-check your voltages as the other posted suggested on the off-chance that the CPU didn't detect correctly.

Also I thought I'd add, core number 2 is the one regestering at 41c idle and that is what nTune is telling me my cpu temp is, but pc Wizard is saying CPU temp (different from the individual temperatures of the cores) is 31c, which is the same as the nTune system temp reading.

Quote: Original post by 3fast3furious
Has anyone used PC wizard? I am using it right now to monitor the temperatures as well as nTune and it is giving me the temperatures of both cores and they are actually 5c apart from eachother. One core is regestering in at 36c and the other is coming in at 41c. Does this mean my heatsink is not seated properly?(hopefully), or that the cpu heatspreader is all messed?

It's entirely possible that one core is under more load than the other, in which case it would produce more heat. Open up your task manager, and look at the CPU loads under the Performance tab. If the CPUs are under roughly the same load while temps are skewed by several degrees, then its possible, though not necessarily indicative, that there is a flaw.