Thermal paste recommendations?

[matrixvision]

I bought a retail AMD Athlon 1700 to be worked with a ECS K7S5A mobo and would like to do some conservative OC'ing.

Should I buy some thermal paste for the retail HS/F the chip comes with?

Does the HS/F come installed on the chip?

Do you really notice a difference between the various thermal pastes? Arctic alumina vrs arctic silver II etc?

 

[minendo]

get Artic Silver II thermal paste

I just got the XP1800+ and am using Artic Silver II and a thermalright sk6 hs. I dont know too much about the retail hs cause i didnt use it.

 

[cpals]

<< I bought a retail AMD Athlon 1700 to be worked with a ECS K7S5A mobo and would like to do some conservative OC'ing.

Should I buy some thermal paste for the retail HS/F the chip comes with?

Does the HS/F come installed on the chip?

Do you really notice a difference between the various thermal pastes? Arctic alumina vrs arctic silver II etc? >>



Well, first of all.... you bought the wrong mobo to be doing overclocking. Anytime you get a cpu and heatsink you should use thermal paste no matter what it is. I would recommend the Arctic Alumina since it has no silver in it and so you can't mess your processor up (hopefully).

Ehh... no they come seperately. You have to install the heatsink on top of the mobo.

 

[Wind]

I used ASII. Temp could be decrease between 2-4C when use.

 

[SeventySeven]

That ECS board is very stable at default settings, but very, very poor for any kind of overclocking.

Although I would recommend OCZ Quick Silver II paste, my opinion is that the 1-2 degrees you might cut aren't worth going out of your way for... even if you just have the Radio Shack stuff!!

 

[FlowerMan]

Arctic Silver produces two top-notch thermal compounds now:

Arctic Silver 2 - Silver based - Best performance, but slightly electrically conductive/capacitive.
Arctic Alumina - Alumina ceramic based - Slightly worse performance than AS2, but not electrically conductive/capacitive.

Generic white silicone/zinc thermal compound will be fine if you dont OC.

Although I do not totally agree with Kyle's results, here is a review among hundreds that you should take a look at. http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/cooling/compound/

 

[matrixvision]

Thanks for all the strong input. I think I will use some Artic alumina given the input and lack of electrical conductivity.

SVC has it for $3.75 with free shipping

 

[Kipper]

Second the vote for ASII:

Link to SVC - they're selling this even cheaper now! WOW!

Edit: The thermal stuff they are selling that cheap is Arctic ALUMINA, not Arctic SILVER II.