New heatsink or current heatsink but with Arctic Silver 5? (Barton 2500+ Overclock)

[SilentAssassin]

I'm going to overclock my cousin's pc soon but before I do I have a qeustion for you guys. He has an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton and his current temps are about 40c idle/50-55c load so his temps are going to need to be lowered first. My question is should he get a whole new heatsink or do you think just applying Arctic Silver 5 to the barton retail heatsink would lower the temps enough? The barton heatsink that he's currently using is just using the standard thermal pad and no thermal grease at all.

 

[myocardia]

How about more case airflow? Most people are running low-50's under load with the retail heatsink, while running at 11x200.

 

[adams828]

yeah check out the case first.. maybe the case/psu fans are dirty? that seems high for retail hsf @ stock speeds. my 2500+ @ 200 fsb runs ~55C under load, using the retail hsf/thermal pad. (no extra case fans either). if you can get it to run stock but cooler by cleaning the fans (or retail hsf) of dust, etc. then i'd say you'd be fine to OC using that and some artic silver

 

[SilentAssassin]

hmmm maybe the heatsink isn't sitting correctly or something then... his case has very good airflow and the psu fans are fine. Actually now that I think about it, when I first put it together the CPU was giving me trouble when I locked it in. It would be sitting fine but when I lowered the latch to lock it, one side of the cpu would be raised up to where I could see the pins. So I moved the latch back up and pressed the cpu down while I locked it and I think it was flat that time. The pins might have been showing just a little bit still on one side though. Like maybe a paper thick gap on one side...

 

[jhites]

Using AS5 instead of the thermal pad will help the temps but I would personally never use a retail heatsink on any overclocked rig of mine.