Paste Ponderings

[unacceptable_risk]

Hi all,
Luv this site.
This is my first post on any forum ever.

Whilst looking through the picture gallery, I encountered the large black cube and it's story. The pictures of the motherboard, laden with heat-sinks on every chip, not to mention water on the fsb controller etc, fired my imagination.

This coupled with the obvious importance of bus speed in overall performance, sent me scurrying for the old heat-sink box. I have a fine collection of suitable sinks arranged. What I need to know is a bit of paste theory.

Can I use thermal paste on its own to adhere a sink to a chip?
Also, I learned to not let paste spill onto the cpu chip surface, as corrosion of the chip can occur. Is this true? and are other chips and Ic's different.

Don't want to ruin my board in enthusiasm.
I have an athlon 1600+ on aopen ak73v board with 256 sd (no-name brand)

any thoughts appreciated.:2guns: :eek:

[Shep]

I've never head of thermal paste corroding any part of a chip, but you do have to be careful of the pastes which contain metals such as Artic silver and the likes - if this stuff gets on any contacts, it can have surficent electrical conduction to mess things up.

As to sticking heatsinks to things, you'll need some thermal adhesive. These usually come as epoxy type stuff which have two tubes, the paste and the hardener. Artic silver and a few other companyes make these. A number of people mix in some extra thermal pase in with the epoxy to weaken it a bit, as if you need to get it off you'll have trouble if you don't. Another option is sticky pads, these are easyer to use, but probably don't conduct heat quite as well.

[lechumbl]

Hi unacceptable_risk,

First let me :D :D WELCOME :D :D you to Liquid Ninjas. We are glad to have you aboard and posting.

Second, the H/S will not attach with the thermal paste. BUT, there is thermal epoxy available. It has the adhesion properties and the thermal cooling also. Is available at most electronics and PC Stores.
Problem is with it, once you put it on, it is pretty much on for good.

Take care, and again, Welcome..........

[unacceptable_risk]

Thanks Guys,

Do you think there is much point in cooling the south bridge or any of the smaller chips?

Also, when I up my frontside bus, I assume that is running my ram faster. Can you confirm this for me? And do you think the no-name ram is up to it?

So many questions

Thanks again.:)

[lechumbl]

Hi again,

I personally do not cool the south bridge or the smaller chips on my three rigs at home. Some folks do, but I don't see any difference in the temps.

When you up the FSB, you also up everything else.

Memory is a tricky thing.
Some mem modules O/C very well, and some do not.
I had no-name memory that O/Ced very well, and some that would not at all.
Best to try and see if it will or not.

Sorry not to be more helpful.

Take care........

[Player0]

Hello, and welcome to the board. I think the cube yer talking about is mine, so I figgured I'd make some comments.

Yes, you'll want to attach heatsinks to your chips (not your CPU) with Arctic Silver Epoxy (or Arctic Alumina Epoxy which is a little cheaper). Some people mix this with a bit of regular Arctic Silver thermal paste, which 'weakens' the epoxy, making it possible to remove the heatsink later. If you dont weaken the epoxy, the heatsink is stuck forever pretty much.

The board I had modded like that was extremely overclocked. Many of the heatsinks weren't necessary, but hey. If you're mixing epoxy, you might as well do 6 heatsinks if yer going to do one. I put a heatsink on anything I felt getting warm. These include the power MOSFETs, the PLL chips (one for FSB, one for RAM), the Raid controller and a few other assorted things. Although the heatsinks maybe didnt help much, they definitely don't hurt.

I put a heatsink on the Southbridge because it got warm on large file transfers. Modern VIA southbridges can get really warm, and might benefit from a bit of passive cooling. The Northbridge ALWAYS needs a good heatsink, and I commonly upgrade the stock HSF on the Northbridge. Yes, on that one board I did water cool the northbridge, but that was extremely overkill (in fact, I didn't just use water, I used water that was 10c degrees cold). This added no benefit to the system what so ever, so I just recommend people add air cooling. The only heatsinks I recommend for people are putting them on the MOSFETs and the PLL chips as this generally makes things a little more stable for me. Improve the HS on the NB as well, and your set for some serious overclocking.

Of course, the best way to squeeze MHz is to start off with a decent base PC. There's little point in spending $50 to modify a motherboard to gain 10mhz FSB when you can spend $80, get a brand new one that is 100mhz faster :) The same with RAM. I never ever buy cheap ram. Yes, sometimes generic stuff works good, and sometimes it even overclocks. But its hit and miss, and generally cheap sticks of rams aren't as stable. Most PC crashes are caused by the ram (that is...if your not overclocking). When you upgrade, go with Crucial or Giel or Mushkin or Corsair (my fav). Good motherboards are Abit, Asus, MSI, Epox. To name a few.

Yes, raising your FSB is making you go faster. It's making everything go faster, from your CPU to your Hard Drives. Remember to make sure your system is stable. Download tools such as 3dMark2002 (madonion.com) an Prime95 (mersenne.org), and run these for say 24 hours. If your system doesn't crash, your stable, and you can raise your FSB even higher. If you start notcing these benchmark apps crashing, well you'll want to back off the overclock. Or look for ways to make it stable (like increasing voltage). Your overclock ability on that board will be extremely limited though. But, any little bit helps right? :)