HOW MUCH THERMAL COMPOUND? this has being doing my head in for ages, how much thermal compound do i really need between my Processor and my Copper heat sink and fan? thickness of a sheet of paper, or thick as S**T? Any ideas? Cheers Chaps & Chapesses SMP :stupid:
Just a very thin coat. You only need to cover the core, so you don't need much. Just enough to cover the core is plenty. If you happen to be using a compound with a conductive material in it (like Arctic Silver), it could potentially short out any surface mount components on the processor packaging---but this is most critical when doing it on an Athlon or Duron CPU. The other down side is you waste a lot of compound---which gets expensive with Arctic Silver and similar stuff.
Thanks for the Swift reply, so... do i just need to apply a paper thin cover to the actual processor (tiny shiny square in the middle) and be very careful not to get any over the edges and onto the of the brown bit with all the gates on. (see pic at... http://www.zdnet.co.uk/reviews/graphics/2001/10/amd-athlon-xp-image.gif i dont know all the tech terms) cos in the first place i put a tiny thin layer just on the processor and not on the Hsink. Then i mounted it, got it all working! great, still a little hotter than i thought... So... Trip to PCWorld... Coolermaster premium... Read up on websites about but none explained it well and there pictures seemed to show the compund spread all over!. Q is... Paper thin layer JUST on the processor? Whats the preffered thermal compound? AND is it recommended to get a Hard drive cooler cos it feels like you could cook eggs on it! If so which one?
