How important is the cpu heat sink grease

Hi,

How important is the cpu/heat sink grease. When I replaced the cpu in socket
7, there was a bit of grease left on the heat sink. I looked for the specs
of the heat sink and fan on the internet and found out it could handle up to
1.4 ghz cpus (mine is 400 mhz).

Do these AMD K-6 2/3 give signs if overheating?

Regards

Richard

 

Yes. They smoke and burn.


There were interesting videos available on the web a year or so ago. I
think they were hosted by anandtec.com. Maybe the videos are still around
on the net. Just now, however, I couldn't find them in a quick search at
anandtech.

The videos showed an experiment where the heat sink/fan was pulled off of
Intel and AMD CPU's to see what would happen when they overheated.

During normal operation, the heat sink/fan was removed from the Intel CPU.
Within a short time, it slowed its processing but it did not smoke and did
not burn. Once the heat sink was replaced, the Intel CPU speeded up to
normal processing speed. No apparent damage done.

Similarly, during normal operation, the heat sink/fan was removed from the
AMD CPU. Smoke was quickly evident and the overheating continued until
charring occurred. Of course, they didn't bother replacing the heat
sink/fan because the AMD CPU had destroyed itself. As I remember, the
total destruction took place in about one minute or less of real time.

So, I would have to say that since you mention "AMD" specifically, heat is
a major concern with, at least, some models of AMD CPU's. I would guess
the old K6 is certainly one of the affected models.

I think the best advice is use good grease applied sparingly in accordance
with manufacturers instructions. Couple that with a good heat sink and a
good fan.

Independent studies suggest that the type of grease isn't all that
important. Some swear by "silver" compounds and so forth and so on.
Mainly, the proper application of a thin film seems to be most important.
You'll find many tutorials on the web. They usually start you off by
telling you to gather up an old credit card to use as a spreader.

//rus\\

 

Just did a little more looking. It wasn't AnandTech. It was Tom's
Hardware.com

 

Found it:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2001/09/17/hot_spot/page6.html

You'll need the DivX codec if you don't have it. Also downloadable at that
page.

//rus\\

 

Thanks Rus about the advices.

I have greased it this morning to be on the safe side.

I must also presume that there are some cpu management softwares that could
come into play to prevent damages to cpus (and they most likely are cpu
specific). May be that the experiments were a little bit flawed?

Thanks