Heatsink Question

[jeeich]

OK, I've got what you all probably think is a very dumb question. Regardless of what you think, I'm going to ask it anyway.

I recently replaced the heatsink and fans on my GeForce card and on my PIII-600. I haven't overclocked either of them, but the fans had died and I could only find the heatsink/fan combos. When I look at the heatsinks that I have (the removed ones and the new ones), some have solid metal bottoms that make contact with the chip and some have pads. The pads seem to vary from what looks like a tin foil layer to what appears to be a 1/16" rubber (not sure if it's rubber) pad. Another one has a thinner black rubber looking pad. My question is: are these pads there just to protect the metal and they should be removed prior to installing, or are they some special heat transfer material that just looks like rubber? Seems to me that if they are rubber, they will prevent heat transfer to the heatsink.

I know this is probably a dumb question, but I'm stumped. None of the original heatsinks had a pad of any type so that is what I was expecting for the replacements. However the pads don't seem like they would be easy to remove.

 

[Carl Uman]

Those pads should be heat conductive (so leave them). Only reason to take them off would be if you have something to replace it with. Basically direct contact with heatsink (from whatever you are cooling) doesn't work well because both surfaces have small bumps and you need something that helps fill in the bumps so that heat is transfered better.

Hope that helped.