Thunderbird 1GHz HSF Question

Modeps

Lifer
Oct 24, 2000
17,254
44
91
This goes out to anyone who has a Thunderbird 1GHz or other. When installing my HSF onto the chip, I had a hell of a time getting it on there. First I got the thermal paste, sploched it on in a nice even layer over the bottom of the HSF, then I go to put it on. Uh Oh... the damn heatsink is too big. Grind it down a bit, repeat. Damn, clips arnt latching on very easily. press harder... hope this dont break the processor. click. its on.

Here's my question. I'm not sure if the HSF is going to draw enough heat away from the processor, due to the fact that, well, it seems like the HSF is only touching the little feet looking things on the processor and the piggybacked extra chip sticking out of the processor. to get the thermal paste to touch everything, i would have to use like the whole little tube of the stuff (they're supposed to be good for 3 cpu's). Ive read horror stories about people frying their processors within a few seconds of bootup so i want to be sure im pretty safe... any advice?
 

tweakr

Senior member
Mar 2, 2000
270
0
0
Hey there

The "piggybacked" extra chip you describe is in fact the processor core itself...the larger area is just to support the pins, and some extra resistors/bridges. As long as the central raised blue/green area is touching the heatsink, you will have no problems (assuming the heatsink is large enough to dump all the heat from a TBird). The heatsinks for AMD SocketA are supposed to put a lot of pressure on the chip, to ensure as close a mating as possible and thus the best heat transfer possible. Following on, make sure you don't put *too* much thermal goop on the chip - it only requires a thin layer - thicker layers actually impede heat transfer....

cheers
tweakr