Thermal Paste & Long Life

[bobt1978]

neophyte temp/thermal paste concern

Motherboard replaced at local shop in minneapolis. My old sys just stopped booting, local shop put in ASRock K7VM3 socket A mainboard but didnt use thermal grease or new thermal pad! Now sys runs about 4-5 deg C warmer.

Probably no big deal...was running 38-42 and now goes 43-50 ... room temp fairly stable 75 deg F

Dont plan on ocing ... sys used for gen office tasks and heavy web surfing...seldom game, other than FS2004.

Do you recommend thermal grease or new pad or is it ok to leave it alone?

Thanks

Bob
😕
my system
Asrock K7VM3 mainboard
AMD 1800+
2x256 generic PC2100 ram
NVidia GEForce3 TI 200 64Mb
40Gb Western Digital IDE hard drive

 

[Lord Evermore]

It's impossible to compare temperatures between two different mainboard models, and even between just two different boards of the same model. A few degrees difference is within the range of difference just because they're different circuitry, different thermal probes, different electrical properties. A thermal probe on a mainboard or even the diode in newer CPUs isn't a precisely calibrated physical reading, it's just the mainboard's monitoring chip reading relative voltages and current and trying to calculate a somewhat accurate temperature based on that.

As long as the system isn't crashing, it's not likely to be anything to worry about. Technically when you remove a heatsink, you should always replace the thermal compound. If there was a standard thermal gum/pad on it before, that needs to be completely cleaned off with alcohol (or naptha, lighter fluid, is very good at it, and an alcohol chaser) and then either a new thermal pad or compound applied. If it was just compound before, you can get away with just applying more of it but cleaning it is still better.

The reason is simply that when the heatsink is applied, the pressure is intended to squeeze out as much of the thermal compound as possible, so that there is more metal to metal contact, and the thermal goo is only filling in microscopic pits where the metal atoms can't make contact. When you remove the heatsink and put it back on, you can't get it to align atomically exactly in the same place, so the metal may be making contact with thermal goo molecules instead of metal on the CPU, and then there may also be air gaps where there's nothing making contact at all.

It's still sufficient to make acceptable cooling performance, but not optimal. The less heat being dissipated by the heatsink, the warmer the CPU core, and the shorter the lifespan on it, but we're still talking decades of life being reduced by a few percent, unless the heatsink was outrageously failing to make contact in which case the CPU core would be more likely to just burn up with an AthlonXP.

You can just leave it like it is, and if you start experiencing crashes when doing CPU intensive things, consider putting on new compound. Every time you take off and put back on a heatsink on a CPU like the AXP, you take a risk of damaging the core, and any heatsink retention mechanism that involves lots of pressure applied to get a clip onto the socket lugs risks breaking the plastic or the mainboard.

 

[PianoMan]

Good advice - if you're not getting excessive temperatures, leave well enough alone. In fact, those aren't bad temps for a Palomino.

But... I'd find another shop to take your business - glad they weren't swapping out a Prescott!!! :Q

PM

 

[bobt1978]

Thanks for the extensive reply. Will monitor temps closely for now - currently temp seems to be holding around 45C - but next excursion under the hood I will definitely apply some Arctic Silver Ceramique.

Appreciate the thoroughness of your response! Like the benevolent neglect approach. Reminds me of one of my favorite physicians!