Bought Computer - CPU heat sink questions

[OriginHacker21]

Wow, lots of information here. When I got my Dell system from Ebay - the heat sinks were off - the "goo/gel/goop" was dried as hard as rock on the heat sink. It looked like chunks of this "goop" were missing so we scrubbed as much of it off as possible so there wouldn't be parts of the CPU not touching the heat sink.

I used SisoftSandra and compared my Dual Xeon 2.4Ghz to a friend's Dual Xeon 2.2Ghz. My chips were actually 2-3 degrees cooler than his IDLE SPEED. On load - we did several tests - mine were usually cooler or same temperature.

So I figure that everything should be OK. It has been bout a month and I've used the Dualie every day with at least 50% cpu (Eve-Online)

After reading all of the above - I don't think it would hurt to put some goop/heat sink paste stuff (a little bit) on the heat sink. I'm just afraid of breaking something that already works. My 400Mhz computer I built was so much simpler than this Dual Xeon.

 

[The Critic]

In the OC community, a good thermal paste (AS5) is far superior to the thermal pads pre-installed on the stock heatsink/fan combinations.

Thermal compound, whether it be in a paste or "pad" form, is a MUST. Pad or paste, they are both a single use product.

The thermal compound does fill in any microscopic pockets between the CPU die and the heatsink, and is a necessity for proper heat conduction.

 

[brianl703]

Yes, thermal paste offers better thermal conductivity than a phase-change pad. However, in long-term use where the system undergoes thermal cycling every day or even several times a day, and the CPU/heatsink is left alone (sounds like most average home/office PCs to me...), phase-change pads are (according to AMD) a better choice.

Incidentally, the Compaq service manual does suggest that the phase-change pad can be re-used if it's still in good condition.