thermal pad on intel retail heatsinks ?

just got my retail celeron 1.8 the heatsink that came with it looks to have large black thermal pad , are these any good , i may o/c but ireally doubt i will

I dont know if they're any good, I didn't bother finding out.

My 1.8a Northy came with the same thing. I took it off as soon as I got it and slapped some AS3 on it. It's messy taking it off, don't do like I did and just decide to peal it off. It has that black thermal grease on top and under that silverish pad. My fingers were black

I don't know if it's worth taking it off or if it dampers cooling performance. I just dont like pre-installed thermal pads, so I take any of them off as soon as spotted. I'll be getting an Alpha PAL-8942 or something along the same lines, so I don't really care about the stock HSF

I remember rippin that thing right off the HSF right when I got it, I than lapped it and applied AS3, which worked quite well..

jd300 said:

just got my retail celeron 1.8 the heatsink that came with it looks to have large black thermal pad , are these any good , i may o/c but ireally doubt i will

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Remove the pad and slap on the as3.

No comparison. Arctic Silver thermal paste is so much better than that crappy black heat pad.

Get rid of it if you intend to do any overclocking of that rig . According to Arctic Silver's web page it will give inferior cooling to AS 1 or 2 or 3 . Secondly the pad partially melts esp the black ones and some of it soaks into the heatsink itself . This decreases the heat transfer ability of the heatsink . What's worse is that when u decide to change it to AS2 or 3 the ingrained thermal pad gets between the heatsink and the new better thermal paste and prevents optimal transfer . I've seen some recommend a thorough cleaning off and even lapping after having one of those pads .

In short ................ take it off and use AS3 .

I would do a very slight lap job, just to get that crud out of the marks in the base of the heatsink. You could probably pick up 600 grit and do it.

Rip, lap, AS3. That pretty much sums it up.