[HELP] Duron heat / heatsink installation and thermal grease questions

[asterisks]

Hello.

I have just bought a duron 600 and without any overclocking, I installed the chip. When I first ran the system, the heatsink was not making contact with the die and the chip overheated beyond 90 deg C, according to the Gigabyte GA-7ZM CPU sensor. The chip was overheated for around 5-10 minutes. Then I removed the four foam rubbers
so that the heatsink could make contact with the die. This reduced the temperature to 78 deg C. I then ripped off the thermal pad and applied
thermal grease which reduced the temp to +- 50 deg C. That's the background, here are the
questions.

1. What is the safe / normal operating temperature range for a duron 600 processor?

2. What kind of damage can 5 - 10 minutes of overheating inflict on the chip and how likely is it for the chip to have been damaged?

3. When applying thermal grease, do I apply the grease to the little resistors around the die as well?

4. This heatsink is supposed to be for a socket A processor but might be for a socket 370 (the dealer said it's a socket A cooler, the box has no identification so I can't confirm). With the foam rubbers on, the heatsink won't make contact with the die. Are there any tricks to solve that problem?

5. I will be moving the computer around a bit (for network games etc). If I leave the foam shock absorbers off, and have the computer on the back of a van (lots a vibrations), what is the likelyhood of actual damage being done to the processor considering a normal fan/heatsink cooler strap.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Burnedhardware]

1:
check http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm for specs on the thing; 90 C is extremely hot& shouldn't happen

2:
worst case scenario: melting http://www.tweakmax.com/html/k6/k6-1.cfm

3:
In physics, there is a formula to convert heatresistance (isolation) into electical resistance (law of Wiedemann-Franz (lack of greek alphabet: kappa/sigma=LT (heattransfercoefficient/electricalconductivity=numer of Lorentz X the abs. temperature (sorry, i'm duch)) Maybe putting thermal compound on those contacts isnt a good idea (I dont know wether there is a plastic layer around them (electrical isolation)
update...oops...thermal compound isnt an alloy, is it?-> it is possible that it's only a heat conductor, but an electrical isolator

4:
you can put a piece of copperplate between the processor and the cooler. be sure it doesnt make contact to those resistors(are those just resistors???)

5:the worst thing that can happen is (the cooler is attached to the socket) that you rip a contact between tne mobo and socket

i hope this answers it all

 

[asterisks]

Thanks. More of my great hole of ignorance has been filled

Keep well.

 

[Burnedhardware]

oops...a mistake (see update)

 

[Choy]

The thermal greese made for procs aren't conductive.

Since you have removed the pads the fit between core and cooler will not be perfect making it possible for it to shift. Putting it in a moving enviroment eg van, puts the proc at high risk of wear and ultimatly destruction.

 

[Burnedhardware]

indeed, i tested some compound with a multimeter that is able to read the resistance

removing the pads isn't a good idea, maybe you should find high quality thermal paste (eg.artic silver) to fill up the gap between the die and sink

 

[downhiller80]

Do not just fill the gap with thermal compound! This stuff is designed to be used in minute quantities, preferable only a few microns to fill imperfections in the heatsink/dies "flat" surfaces!

I have just ordered a Duron & PEP66 and too would like too know the best solutions for fitting hetsink.

Surely it's easy enough to trim a little bit off of the top of each of those pads with a scalpel or somethign similar - what do you think?

Seb