Thermal Greese needed

[lifeblood]

I'm upgrading my wifes PC from at 1.2 GHz Tulatin to an Athlon 64 +3500. I have my old Epox AGP motherboard I'm pairing with a CPU I got on ebay. The CPU did not come with a heatsink so I got a new COOLER MASTER DK8-8ID2A-0L-GP from newegg. Do I need thermal grease? I will not overclock it. The cooler has the standard gray square thing on the bottom where it sits on the CPU. Is that enough? Or will the grease help drop the temp further thus extending the CPU's life?

I finally have to upgrade her as she bought an iPod and uses iTunes. The usb 1.1 ports on the old PC are painfully slow when syncing the iPod, and downloading a small movie from iTunes absolutely max's out the CPU. Pity. For everything else she does that Tulatin was just fine.

 

[foges]

If the grey square you are talking about is thermal paste (and not just solid metal) you should be fine. I used the standard paste that was pre applied to my artic cooling freezer 64 and there werent any problems.

 

[Denithor]

Yep, the pre-applied thermal paste is usually "good enough" for most users. Assuming you aren't overclocking the hell out of it or anything (doubtful, since the Tulatin was almost adequate power) you don't need a high performance aftermarket paste (which typically lower temps by a few degrees at most).

EDIT: Just looked at your system (sig). Why didn't you just give that one to the wifey & build yourself a nice C2D system? Really cheap these days, especially if you already have case & etc.

 

[DSF]

If you ever use a different thermal paste, don't leave the stock stuff on the heatsink. Clean it and the CPU thoroughly before applying the new compound.

 

[lifeblood]

Originally posted by: Denithor
EDIT: Just looked at your system (sig). Why didn't you just give that one to the wifey & build yourself a nice C2D system? Really cheap these days, especially if you already have case & etc.

I plan to but not for a few months. She needs/wants the PC now. Unfortunately, thanks to the economic down turn and the price of gas, I'm having to count pennies.

Thanks for the info. I will use what it comes with for now. Thanks also, DSF, I definitely will file that away for future use as I had not realized it. I would have just applied the 3rd party stuff on the gray pad and not given it another thought.

 

[Athanasios2104]

Here's your answer: http://hardwarelogic.com/news/...2752/3/2008-03-03.html

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: lifeblood

Originally posted by: Denithor
EDIT: Just looked at your system (sig). Why didn't you just give that one to the wifey & build yourself a nice C2D system? Really cheap these days, especially if you already have case & etc.

Thanks also, DSF, I definitely will file that away for future use as I had not realized it. I would have just applied the 3rd party stuff on the gray pad and not given it another thought.

As I just mentioned in another post, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. While thermal interface material conducts heat better than air, it does so worse than solid metal. Too much TIM between the CPU and heatsink will act as an insulator, relatively speaking, slowing down the transfer of heat compared to a thin coating of compound.