Thermal paste, too much?

[Roenie]

I used far 'too much' cooling paste when I installed a thermaltake super-orb on a Thunderbird 1,2Ghz CPU. I used all of the paste that came with it and spread it out on the bottom of the Orb, it has an engraved circle on the bottom which is a lot bigger than the actual size of the chip. Still, it's a rather thick layer of paste. My 'theory' was, that all the superfluous paste would be pressed aside anyway, when pressing down and securing the cooler. Was I right, or wrong? Does using a lot of paste decrease the cooling capacity of the cooler? (By a few degrees C or 5? 10? how big a difference does it make?)

The CPU is about 49 deg. C 'idle', and 52 under stress.
I think these aren't ground-breaking results.
It used to run at about 58-61 deg. with the Coolermaster heatsink & fan that came with the cpu & mobo.

P.S. My mobo chipset temp, after installing a quieter fan on the chipset, has increased to 43 degrees, which used to be 36. I used to have the sides off my PC case, so maybe that's it, because the case isn't properly cooled yet. BUT, I wonder what chipset temp would proof harmful? LOL I don't intend to try and find out. Anyone?

 

[wolfsblood]

Hey the same thing happend to me, and actually it took my temp down about 10 degrees, i have a thunderbird 900 mhz with a taisol cooler and it is at 39 degrees. I also have a question, I did the same thing and the thermal paste is all over the chip is this dangerous at all?

 

[Roenie]

I've read some comments on thermal paste being slightly conductive,
but I think the only source of information used is the following URL,
which is from Arctic Silver:
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm

But err, ALL OVER the chip? oh no! lol I haven't checked it out,
but I'd hoped for the paste to only touch the die, not the whole chip.
I don't want to have to swim my way through that sh*t if I
need to get to the L1 bridges 🙂.

I'm thinking maybe I'll get some arctic silver and start over,
thanks to that URL I found here somewhere @ the board I'm sure
to do a much better job next time. But I wonder if my Thermaltake Super-Orb
is capable of cooling the TBird 1,2G better than it is, now.

 

[DoobieOnline]

You might want to take the Orb off and clean up the excess before the paste runs over something it shouldn't. When using paste, apply it to the CPU core and gently spread it out paper-thin with a credit card - then attach a clean heatsink. If the paste gets on any of your CPU traces, it could cause problems.