I scratched some of my thermal paste off, Is this heatsink ok to use?

[MurdarMachene]

Hi. I just purchased an athlon 64 3400+ with clawhammer core. I got the retail box with the heatsink fan thingy. My friend was reading the instructions to me as I was taking the box apart. He told me to remove the plastic covering from the bottom of the heatsink. He hadn't seen me already take the plastic covering off the bottom of the heatsink though, so I thought he meant for me to take a covering off of the thermal paste. Like, a second covering. I was wrong. I instead scratched a small amount of thermal paste off on my fingernail, swore profusely, and decided to post pictures here to see if my heatsink is still alright for use, or if I should get some thermal paste, or maybe something else. I'll post pictures now.

First, I took a picture with the plastic case on to give you an approximation of how much is scratched in relation to the little sqaures on the bottom of the plastic thing.

http://img.photobucket.com/alb...nobodyTS/Case-On-2.jpg

Here's another with the plastic case on.

http://img.photobucket.com/alb...nobodyTS/Case-On-1.jpg

And then I took the case off to show you just the thermal paste with no covering.

http://img.photobucket.com/alb...xnobodyTS/Case-Off.jpg

Please tell me if I can continue building my computer right now, or if I should worry about this and seek out some thermal paste. Thanks dudes, Patrick L.

 

[Zambien]

Originally posted by: MurdarMachene
Hi. I just purchased an athlon 64 3400+ with clawhammer core. I got the retail box with the heatsink fan thingy. My friend was reading the instructions to me as I was taking the box apart. He told me to remove the plastic covering from the bottom of the heatsink. He hadn't seen me already take the plastic covering off the bottom of the heatsink though, so I thought he meant for me to take a covering off of the thermal paste. Like, a second covering. I was wrong. I instead scratched a small amount of thermal paste off on my fingernail, swore profusely, and decided to post pictures here to see if my heatsink is still alright for use, or if I should get some thermal paste, or maybe something else. I'll post pictures now.

First, I took a picture with the plastic case on to give you an approximation of how much is scratched in relation to the little sqaures on the bottom of the plastic thing.

http://img.photobucket.com/alb...nobodyTS/Case-On-2.jpg

Here's another with the plastic case on.

http://img.photobucket.com/alb...nobodyTS/Case-On-1.jpg

And then I took the case off to show you just the thermal paste with no covering.

http://img.photobucket.com/alb...xnobodyTS/Case-Off.jpg

Please tell me if I can continue building my computer right now, or if I should worry about this and seek out some thermal paste. Thanks dudes, Patrick L.

Alot of the time there is a little too much thermal paste applied to those heat sinks. When I setup my system I actually didn't put ANY paste on the HSF, but put a very minimal amount on the chip. When I say minimal i mean that I put it on with my finger evenly then used a flat piece of plastic to scrape as much off as I could, then rubbed what was left on the chip around evenly again.

When I was done you could see the text on the chip through the VERY THIN layer of thermal paste. Really the idea with thermal paste is to just fill in the microscopic cracks that exist between the HSF and chip. Metal is a better conductor than the paste... it's the air that you don't want and that the reason for the paste.

People please back me up on this if you agree.

Thanks!

Adam

 

[futuristicmonkey]

That shouldn't be a problem. Hell, that's the first thing you should do when building a new computer - use some 99% isopropyl alcohol to remove the thermal paste, then apply a new layer of Arctic Silver5 (or Ceramique if you like) as per Arctic Silver's Instructions.

Have fun

Edit: Thought this was gonna be the first post after the OP - you'd have thought I'de have learned by now

 

[jiffylube1024]

You're fine - it looks like you took almost nothing off.

Ideally, however, you would clean that crap off and use Arctic Silver 5 instead though.