Can Arctic Silver kill my Duron?

[mindslash]

Obviously I put on too much. It eventually (several months) spread out from under the heatsink and is now splattered over parts of the L Bridges. How do I know this... my pc stopped working and so I took everything apart and I don't know if this is the issue or not. I don't have another CPU or motherboard that I can test with. Also I have heard that you can remove the Arctic Silver stuff with rubbing alcohol but I'm not sure how that is done -- AS doesn't seem alcohol soluble. I've also been told that AS isn't conductive so the CPU should not / cannot be fried.

any feedback?

 

[Swanny]

Yup, it can fry it. The layer you should put on you should almost be able to see through.

Try taking it off with nail polish remover and then use rubbing alcohol.

 

[mindslash]

Rats! I was afraid of that. I'll try the nail polish remover/alcohol thing just to make sure. Thanks tho'.

 

[Richardito]

Try scrubbing the CPU with dishwashing liquid and a toothbrush. After rinsing with hot water let the CPU dry for a while before inserting it back in your system. It always works wonderfully for me.

 

[CoDerEd]

yeah i use soap and soft brush also to clean my messy cpu, make sure you wait till it dry though.

 

[CubicZirconia]

Sarcastic posts are cool...(note sarcasm)

 

[cbuchach]

Actually I have found that Goo Gone works quite well with a toothbrush to remove excess Arctic Silver off a CPU die. It just dissolves away with Goo Gone. Then I wash it with isopropyl alcohol to clean it off. However, the Arctic Silver website does not recommend using a Goo Gone to clean the heatsink as they say it fills in the gaps with a rather nonconductive organic material. So use at your own risk; I guess.

 

[Bozo Galora]

Swanny: how can it fry it - its supposed to be non-conductive

 

[daveqb]

i found this happened to a computer i had to fix. An Athlon 1.2

my mate who put it together put way too much paste on the chip (not Arctic Silver)
it almost was going off the edges of the chip when i fpund it.
this was months after the installation & it had been having stability problems right from the start.
in the end it was kinda working; was abl;e to boot up and all, but just got some many Kernal errors & communicating with device 28 errors. i spent a whole sleepless, night 8 hours, swapping in all different components. then finally the CPU a viola! the system would take the Win98 install, before that it would crash before install was finished (or barely started)
i dunno what all that excess paste did, but it killed it.
the chip is right beside me now, just taking up space.

it sounds like it could be restored?

 

[MrThompson]

Goo Gone is not recommended for the CPU die, only the ceramic or organic package it's mounted on. It causes the same problems with the CPU die as heatsinks.