Help, i cant seem to keep my athlon 1.333 below 60 C

Yes, the topic is true. No matter what I do, I can rarely keep my system under 60 C. At idle the lowest I have EVERY gotten is around 57. I have a cheap fan on there now, so I know I cant expect anything good. My main question applies to people who know about watercooling. I have a 1.333 GHz (266MHz) athlon, I hear these produce more heat the 200MHz athlons. What I need to know is that if I am going to watercool, which I plan on doing. Do I need to put di-electric grease and silicon on the mobo ? The reason I ask is that I am going to be putting on 2 80 watt TEC's and I am pretty sure that there will be little to none condensation. A friend of mine has the same system and he is watercooling it with a 156 watt TEC and he keeps his temps around 30 C. I don't want to apply any silicon and di-electric grease, because the last time I did ( like 5 days ago) this mobo ( a7a266 ) got fried and I had to return it, I was running a duron 750 at the time. So I am hesitant to apply any grease to it. I hope I have given enough information for someone to understand my situation and advise. Any kind of suggestions are appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Grease is by FAR better then no grease. Get the Arctic Silver II grease. It has very little conductivity and I have been using it since it came out and before that I used Arctic Silver. That will DEFINITELY drop your temps ALOT! The grease will make for MUCH better contact between the CPU and the HSF. This causes better control of cooling off the CPU and in turn may even help cool off the case a little. GET SOME GREASE ON THAT BADBOY!

As tacoman said!

THERMAL COMPOUND IS REQUIRED YOU WILL KILL IT

I think he was talking about the dielectric grease that he would put in the socket, to protect from water. I haven't heard of anyone having trouble with this method before. What type of silicon were you using when you fried your mobo? I'm not sure that 2 80 watt TEC's are going to be able to cool a 1.33 Athlon effectively, those things put out a lot of heat. Also, what heatsink are you using currently?

Tacoman667 (Jun 27, 2001 08:27 a.m.):
Grease is by FAR better then no grease. Get the Arctic Silver II grease. It has very little conductivity and I have been using it since it came out and before that I used Arctic Silver. That will DEFINITELY drop your temps ALOT! The grease will make for MUCH better contact between the CPU and the HSF. This causes better control of cooling off the CPU and in turn may even help cool off the case a little. GET SOME GREASE ON THAT BADBOY!

Click to expand...

Ditto....

You should see a drop after applying the grease.

I am using Arctic Silver II thermal paste. Anyone know if a 156 TEC is enough? My friends computer only goes to about 23-25 C Idle, and he is using a 12V 20 Amp PS.]
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Is the Di-electric grease really necessary, can there be any complications If I don't use it? And would 2 80 Watt TEC be enough to cause condensation.

*off topic* but I am reading the WoT books and a new character has just come up with your name. Is that why you picked Moridin? I am reading book 7 now and Asmodean is here too!

You caught me red handed Yes this nick is indeed from the Wheel Of Time series. Which I might add is the greatest since JRR wrote Lord of the Rings. I hope you like the novels as much as I have. Wait until you read up to book 9. They get better and better.

Moridin (Jun 27, 2001 04:50 p.m.):
I am using Arctic Silver II thermal paste. Anyone know if a 156 TEC is enough? My friends computer only goes to about 23-25 C Idle, and he is using a 12V 20 Amp PS.]
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Is the Di-electric grease really necessary, can there be any complications If I don't use it? And would 2 80 Watt TEC be enough to cause condensation.

Click to expand...

A 156 watt TEC would definately be enough in my opinion, just make sure that the psu you're using is adequate. Are you sure that it was the di-electric grease that fried your mobo? It's a very good safeguard against condensation getting in the socket. Using it, neoprene sheeting, and that dow conformal coating (I think that's what it's called) should keep condensation from hurting your motherboard. But if this is your first time watercooling, I've heard that it's best to do just water and get the hang of how well your setup works, and then move on to water and TEC's. With water only, you don't have to worry at all about condensation.

Actually I watercooled my dual system that I had before and it worked fine with di-electric grease. The first time I applied di-electric grease to this mobo ( a7a266 ) something got messed, I am not sure if it was the greases fault, to tell you the truth I have no idea why it went bad. Its because of that experience that I am asking about wether or not I should put some on this mobo. I know the benefits of putting on di-electric grease, and I have used it before but I am not sure if its all that safe, and I don't want to mess up this mobo. Because I don't think the store will take it this time.

I've never heard of people having problems with it, but you might want to start a separate thread on it, to make sure that it's safe.