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Thermal pad - Must it be used or will paste do??

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Davbaron

Member
Hello - Advice please for a cooling newbie. Some 2 or 3 months ago my gaming computer wouldn't re boot. - Just wouldn't start. I renewed the PSU to 350 Enermax and swapped vid cards etc to find the cilprit.
I finally replaced the heatsink and the one i bought was a Coolermaster - the type with a thermal pad as opposed to paste.
As soon as i put that on the computer booted and ran fine.
I concluded that the mobo was sensing that there was inadequate transfer ofheat and was therefore not powering up.
Now my present problem is this - All was running well and I had decided to do a big download - 35 megs using a 56 modem- Using Gozilla I had got 60 per cent and started to resume the download. I went to watch TV and some hour and half later came back and there was a black screen. I was locked up. I switched off and thought a switch on would give me scan disk etc and away I go!!
No way, it would not re boot and hasn't done so since.
I figured i had overheated for some reason- so the heatsink/fan was taken off and replaced - still no go. However, I had not bought another thermal pad type heatsink but some paste for the original thermal pad heatsink. I scraped off the remaining thermal pad and put some paste on the processor plate and put the heatsink back on. I think - I hope - I haven't got a proper contact by doing this

My last hope is this- That what i have done is not right and that I can only use a new thermal pad heatsink to get a proper contact..
What are your views and advice please-??
 
Doesnt sound like its the heatsink, what kinda temps are you getting? What kinda CPU mobo etc do you have. What OS are you using? Paste is allways better, the best is Arctic Silver 3 however I dont think this is your solution
 
Sounds like it just died, heh(optimism!) um, though as you apparently did before, revived it....what chip and temps are you running? Anything under 40, depending on your chip, should be okay, .....have you ruled out everything else? resat all the cards and such? checked all your cables? i know it sounds obvious, but i cant tell you how many times i've spent hours figuring out little things because of lack of common sense 😀
 
Thanks for the replies fellas - but as i say, i am something of a newbie so.
1. I don't know what temps I WAS running at - now of course, I'm not running at all!
2. As I am not running, how can i clear the CMOS??
3. I re seated the PSU connections, the switch connection to mobo, the video and memory card have been re located.

It does seem that the last resort step is approaching - a new mobo and processor. I would want to stay with AMD -say XP16 or 18 - I think I should go Via 266A - What mobo do you recommend please?
What I envisage doing is putting in the new mobo and CPU and connecting up all drives etc and then it should work if i switch on ??? - or have i got to do some settings somewhere ( I am not a techie and I have only once put this system back together- does a new mobo require extra things to be done?

Present system is Athlon 1000; MSI 6340 mobo, Enermax 350 PSU, GTS2 vid card, Turtle beach sound card, Windows 98SE.

I am going to try another heatsink this time with thermal pad - it worked last time when all else had failed
 
You clear the cmos while the pc is turned off, it's cleared by shorting two pins (or solder marks, varies) on the mobo. Shorting 'em while the pc is on is a very, very bad thing as it would probably lead to a dead cmos and maybe mobo.

You say you aren't a techie, but you do know what the cmos is, right? And you know how to adjust various things in there? If not, ask and we'll try to help you.

Thermal pads actually transfer heat much worse than thermal paste (or grease as it's also called) so it's not the paste that didn't transfer the heat sufficently so it overheated but more probably a badly seated hsf. If it isn't applied correctly (too thick a layer, should be very thin) it might actually insulate a bit and cause higher temps.
 
Egrimm - thanks for the reply - Please forgive my ignorance in these things. If I short the CMOS thingies while the PC is switched off and that "clears" the CMOS, how does that help me to boot up which I cannot now do??
I have tried twice using (thin layer ) of paste and I have bought and tried a heatsink with a thermal pad. - No luck in booting!!
Does the "clearing " of the CMOS do something to the hard drive?
 
The cmos/bios is where all the data about how the computer is set is stored. When you boot you see some lines of text like "Award bios something" or something similar, that's where you press delete (usually) to get into the cmos/bios and change things.
You set what hd's/cd's/floppy disks the machine has, what ports it have, can adjust irq's, set the speed of the cpu (and oc on most mobos), etc.
When you clear the cmos it returns to default thus clearing any wrong settings. At defualt it autodetects hd's/cd's and the cpu runs at the speed the cpu says it has. You have to tweak the bios to get the most performance but it can result in the computer getting unstable if some settings are too aggresive.

So clearing the cmos will reset everything (don't worry, doesn't affect data on hd's) and as it might have gone bad somehow try to clear it and see if it runs at defualt values, then you can begin tweaking it for better performance.
 
I have cleared the CMOS ( whilst unconnected!! 🙂) and there was no change , ie I still don't boot up.
I have this feeling that the manner of it going wrong is highly relevant here. I was away from the computer when it probably locked up when downloading. If this happened an hour or more before I returned to teh computer, is there some effect this long time in lock up would have in that maybe the computer goes into some sort of deep lock and i need to know how to get out of it?
I am grasping at straws here but maybe someone out there has the answer . I will also post a resume of this on mobo forum.
Any suggestions anyone ??
TIA
 
what speed chip were u running?
what HSF are you using, and is it rated for that speed?


it sounds like ur comp slowly cooked ur processor and now its dead.
 
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