Thread: thermal coating material

hello, i recently upgraded my pc with a new chip (pentium4 & 1.6 ghz) and had a question about the thermal coating material that lies between the heatsink and cpu. i had problems clipping the heatsink and fan assembly onto my motherboard and had to remove it once and put it on correctly. however this resulted in putting a small knick on this thermal coating. is this going to result in a problem down the line (like cpu overheating)? or should i not worry about this too much?

thanks for time and help!

Originally posted by novacain
You mean the white stuff that you smear on the CPU or the CPU's outer case?

White stuff -> No

CPU's outer case -> will atuo off if too hot. So if it turns itself off without warning and won't come back on for a while, then restarts normally, Yes.

as a test i let the computer run the seti@home thing (intensive computing) for about 4 hours and the cpu temp only raised from 40C to 48C and the max temp is like 75C. I'm thinking that everything should be ok but as a necessary precaution i still would lid to replace this damaged thermal interface material. do you know how i could do this? I hear this is some gooey stuff i can just apply to the cpu surface or something like that?

Thanks.

If the original white stuff looked like a piece of sticky tape that came already on the bottom of the heatsink, don't try to take it off, as your temps don't seem to be that bad. Removing that stuff is a pain and if your not careful, you can score the aluminum of the heatsink producing more air gaps. Don't put the paste on top of the previous tape either, as too thick a layer is detrimental to the transfer of heat also.