test of thermal pad on AMD

Lots of talk here recently about thermal pads and what is better etc. I've
seen big drops in temp's ditching the thermal pads and just using plain 'ol
white HS compound instead. Others claim you'll only see a minor change
so...

I just bought a Barton 2500+ on a chaintech 7NIF2 board for by brother. It
was a retail chip with a factory HSF. I just put it on as supplied and when
I booted it up, the idle temp was right at 50C in the bios. Seemed kinda
high but MBM5 said 40C so figured it was OK.

After I got it all set up, the system was pretty noisy from the fans so
wanted to try to quiet it down some. Removed the fan grills, added some
10ohm 1W resistors to the case fan and PSU fan etc. Rechecked and the CPU
temp was the same but now the CPU fan was the loudest one.

So I took the factory HS off and removed the pad. It wasn't like intel's
pad, more like a gooey piece of cheeze? Anyway removed the pad and sanded
the bottom of the HS smooth, it was pretty rough and I know HS compound
likes a smooth surface. The pad was so thick this didn't matter. After I
reinstalled the HS with plain white compound, the idle temp was 11C less,
down at 39C in the bios and 29C in MBM5. Now I could add a resistor to the
CPU fan, drop the RPM 1000 RPM and still is cooler (43C) than it was with
the pad and MUCH quieter!

So anyone installing a retail AMD chip, my advice is to ditch the pad, sand
the bottom of the HS on a piece of glass and throw on some white HS
compound and stay cool/quiet.
--

Stacey

Stacey writes:
I just bought a Barton 2500+ on a chaintech 7NIF2 board for by brother. It
was a retail chip with a factory HSF. I just put it on as supplied and when
I booted it up, the idle temp was right at 50C in the bios. Seemed kinda
high but MBM5 said 40C so figured it was OK.

I've got the same but with ECS N2U400-A board. Room temp was 18C,
BIOS said cpu was about 48C, no case fans, side off the case. I
turned a big room fan against the open side of the case and it
dropped to the lower 40's. Those are about the same as my AMD 2000
with a Vantec TMD Aeroflow and the white goop.

So I took the factory HS off and removed the pad. It wasn't like intel's
pad, more like a gooey piece of cheeze?

Instructions said mine was a phase change material, water clear,
looked less than 1mm thick of rubber cement. Trying to get that
clip on the heat sink latched down was impressive, Even with a
screwdriver to apply pressure I couldn't get it to latch. Then
someone banged on the door and I had to move the case. The heat
sink fell off in the process. When I saw this the second time the
material had changed to a dark grey looking material with a big
impression in it where I had been applying all the pressure. I
wasn't sure whether it was one-time-only or not but I went ahead
and got up on the table with the screwdriver and REALLY applied the
pressure, along with prying the edge of the clip to let it slip
into place. Finally it popped on there.

So anyone installing a retail AMD chip, my advice is to ditch the pad,
sand the bottom of the HS on a piece of glass and throw on some white
HS compound and stay cool/quiet.

I didn't notice the bottom of the sink being rough. Maybe I just
didn't look closely enough. What did you use for polishing compound?

But I think I'm leaning in the direction of a big house fan that
will be ducted to drive air through the cases.

While I was doing all this, and listening to the old house fan
roaring away, the house down the street caught fire. That reminded
me of an old fan a friend and I had mounted in a window decades ago
to pump the hot august air out of the house. The fan made a lot
of noise and fortunately we happened to be in the kitchen looking
at it when it went up in flames.

Does anyone know of a relatively cheap smoke detector like device
BUT it will switch off maybe 1000 watts of power when it thinks
that something has caught fire? I'm surprised that there isn't
something like that out there that I've seen. I'm really not wanting
to come home some evening and discover that a fan failed, burned,
and took the whole place with it.

"Don Taylor" wrote in message
...
Stacey writes:
I just bought a Barton 2500+ on a chaintech 7NIF2 board for by brother.
It
was a retail chip with a factory HSF. I just put it on as supplied and
when
I booted it up, the idle temp was right at 50C in the bios. Seemed kinda
high but MBM5 said 40C so figured it was OK.

MBM5 states the wrong cpu temperture. I had been running my cpu overclocked
to 2.24 at 51 C under load...But in bois it read 67 .

After some searching of the net, Found that infact MBM5 was wrong.
To get correct temp for cpu.

right click MBM in the systray. click settings, General tab click on
advanced up the top. Un-check the box next to "Detect SMbus....." Click
apply then close.
right click again and click exit. then start MBM from the start menu. Now,
when you click underneath the sensor you have for your CPU temp LM90 Remote
should be available. Click apply and all should be sweet.

I've got the same but with ECS N2U400-A board. Room temp was 18C,
BIOS said cpu was about 48C, no case fans, side off the case. I
turned a big room fan against the open side of the case and it
dropped to the lower 40's. Those are about the same as my AMD 2000
with a Vantec TMD Aeroflow and the white goop.

So I took the factory HS off and removed the pad. It wasn't like intel's
pad, more like a gooey piece of cheeze?

Instructions said mine was a phase change material, water clear,
looked less than 1mm thick of rubber cement. Trying to get that
clip on the heat sink latched down was impressive, Even with a
screwdriver to apply pressure I couldn't get it to latch. Then
someone banged on the door and I had to move the case. The heat
sink fell off in the process. When I saw this the second time the
material had changed to a dark grey looking material with a big
impression in it where I had been applying all the pressure. I
wasn't sure whether it was one-time-only or not but I went ahead
and got up on the table with the screwdriver and REALLY applied the
pressure, along with prying the edge of the clip to let it slip
into place. Finally it popped on there.

So anyone installing a retail AMD chip, my advice is to ditch the pad,
sand the bottom of the HS on a piece of glass and throw on some white
HS compound and stay cool/quiet.

I didn't notice the bottom of the sink being rough. Maybe I just
didn't look closely enough. What did you use for polishing compound?

But I think I'm leaning in the direction of a big house fan that
will be ducted to drive air through the cases.

While I was doing all this, and listening to the old house fan
roaring away, the house down the street caught fire. That reminded
me of an old fan a friend and I had mounted in a window decades ago
to pump the hot august air out of the house. The fan made a lot
of noise and fortunately we happened to be in the kitchen looking
at it when it went up in flames.

Does anyone know of a relatively cheap smoke detector like device
BUT it will switch off maybe 1000 watts of power when it thinks
that something has caught fire? I'm surprised that there isn't
something like that out there that I've seen. I'm really not wanting
to come home some evening and discover that a fan failed, burned,
and took the whole place with it.

On Sun, 16 May 2004 02:25:31 -0400, Stacey wrote:

Lots of talk here recently about thermal pads and what is better etc. I've
seen big drops in temp's ditching the thermal pads and just using plain 'ol
white HS compound instead. Others claim you'll only see a minor change
so...

I just bought a Barton 2500+ on a chaintech 7NIF2 board for by brother. It
was a retail chip with a factory HSF. I just put it on as supplied and when
I booted it up, the idle temp was right at 50C in the bios. Seemed kinda
high but MBM5 said 40C so figured it was OK.


Ive never seen it drop that much . Maybe its the area Im in.
On all the AMD processors Ive ever used and all the boards - it tends
to range around 108 - 125 F .

The 1 gig was in the low range and the old 1,4 gig was the hottest
around 125 F and bit higher sometimes.

My barton stays around 114-118.

Doesnt seem to matter a whole lot with me but then I live in a warm
cliimate, I done the scraping and polishing over and over and over
again on several fans using arctic silver and didnt see a huge drop so
I didnt bother. Not that my experience would always hold but Ive done
it several times even on the same CPU convinced I was doing something
wrong and it just wouldnt go lower. Its possible the Barton could
since I havent bothered to scrape it after the experiences on my 1700
and a friends 1600 and the 1.4 and 1 gig athlons I still have around.
I do notice a big drop on some CPUs when I put a big table fan
directed at the open side of the case.


The last time I saw it go down to the 80-90s was a Celeron board I
had.

Stacey wrote:

Anyway removed the pad and sanded
the bottom of the HS smooth, it was pretty rough and I know HS compound
likes a smooth surface.

What grit sandpaper did you use?

--
spammage trappage: replace fishies_ with yahoo

wrote:



Doesnt seem to matter a whole lot with me but then I live in a warm
cliimate, I done the scraping and polishing over and over and over
again on several fans using arctic silver and didnt see a huge drop so
I didnt bother.

I wasn't using "artic silver", maybe that's the difference? Just posting the
results of what I did...
--

Stacey

sooky grumper wrote:

Stacey wrote:

Anyway removed the pad and sanded
the bottom of the HS smooth, it was pretty rough and I know HS compound
likes a smooth surface.

What grit sandpaper did you use?


Started with 120, then 220 then 400. Put the sandpaper on some fairly thick
glass to make sure it was flat. It doesn't have to be polished, just
smooth.
--

Stacey

HSV Guy wrote:


"Don Taylor" wrote in message
...
Stacey writes:
I just bought a Barton 2500+ on a chaintech 7NIF2 board for by brother.
It
was a retail chip with a factory HSF. I just put it on as supplied and
when
I booted it up, the idle temp was right at 50C in the bios. Seemed kinda
high but MBM5 said 40C so figured it was OK.

MBM5 states the wrong cpu temperture. I had been running my cpu
overclocked to 2.24 at 51 C under load...But in bois it read 67 .

After some searching of the net, Found that infact MBM5 was wrong.
To get correct temp for cpu.

right click MBM in the systray. click settings, General tab click on
advanced up the top. Un-check the box next to "Detect SMbus....." Click
apply then close.
right click again and click exit. then start MBM from the start menu. Now,
when you click underneath the sensor you have for your CPU temp LM90
Remote should be available. Click apply and all should be sweet.



Where exactly is this "LM90 remote" setting? I looked around but couldn't
find that one. TIA

--

Stacey

On Sun, 16 May 2004 02:25:31 -0400, Stacey wrote:

Lots of talk here recently about thermal pads and what is better etc. I've
seen big drops in temp's ditching the thermal pads and just using plain 'ol
white HS compound instead. Others claim you'll only see a minor change
so...

I just bought a Barton 2500+ on a chaintech 7NIF2 board for by brother. It
was a retail chip with a factory HSF. I just put it on as supplied and when
I booted it up, the idle temp was right at 50C in the bios. Seemed kinda
high but MBM5 said 40C so figured it was OK.

After I got it all set up, the system was pretty noisy from the fans so
wanted to try to quiet it down some. Removed the fan grills, added some
10ohm 1W resistors to the case fan and PSU fan etc. Rechecked and the CPU
temp was the same but now the CPU fan was the loudest one.

So I took the factory HS off and removed the pad. It wasn't like intel's
pad, more like a gooey piece of cheeze? Anyway removed the pad and sanded
the bottom of the HS smooth, it was pretty rough and I know HS compound
likes a smooth surface. The pad was so thick this didn't matter. After I
reinstalled the HS with plain white compound, the idle temp was 11C less,
down at 39C in the bios and 29C in MBM5. Now I could add a resistor to the
CPU fan, drop the RPM 1000 RPM and still is cooler (43C) than it was with
the pad and MUCH quieter!

So anyone installing a retail AMD chip, my advice is to ditch the pad, sand
the bottom of the HS on a piece of glass and throw on some white HS
compound and stay cool/quiet.

You're right, the original TIM is horrible, but also consider that the
original TIM may take several days to reach max efficiency, and heatsink
surface may vary... none are what I'd call "great" but some a lot rougher
than others. Everyone should get good results following your method but
some may see less drop in temp than you did.

On Sun, 16 May 2004 11:33:57 -0400, Stacey picked
a plump bugger and in sanskrit smeared the following cryptic message:

wrote:



Doesnt seem to matter a whole lot with me but then I live in a warm
cliimate, I done the scraping and polishing over and over and over
again on several fans using arctic silver and didnt see a huge drop so
I didnt bother.

I wasn't using "artic silver", maybe that's the difference? Just posting the
results of what I did...

And one other thing, you voided the warranty on the CPU by putting
the white thermal paste compound on it. AMD changed their policy,
that anybody who puts the white thermal paste compound on any of the
new AMD CPU's will void their warranty. From the day you put that
stuff on the CPU you picked up, the warranty is VOID. Try getting help
from AMD, they will just tell you to get stuffed and they won't help
people who used thermal paste on AMD CPU's. They only support the
thermal pad.