i5 stock cooler

[Admiral Akmir]

I was dusting out my case today with compressed air and I went to take off the cpu fan to dust it only to realize that the heatsink and fan for the i5 seem to be one unit. I accidentally lifted the heatsink off the cpu a small distance before realizing this and putting it back on. I had been checking temps in guild wars 2 prior to the dusting and never broke mid 60's, now I just witnessed the temps fly up into the high 80's after about ten minutes of gameplay, I logged out and now I'm in the mid 40's with skype, chrome and hwmonitor as the only things running.

In HWmonitor under the max column it claims I went up to 97 on a few of the cores which is downright scary. I feel like lifting up the heatsink screwed up the thermal padding that came on the stock heatsink, so what can I do about that? I have some thermal paste laying around, is it possible to somehow scrape the remainder of the thermal padding off and apply my own paste to the heatsink?

 

[MattNo5ss]

Yes, you most likely messed up the stock paste. I'm not sure how you lifted the heatsink off the CPU though. If it was installed correctly, you shouldn't be able to do that unless you ripped the push pins from the mounting holes. You would have to pull REALLY hard for that to happen. If that is indeed what happened, then the heatsink may not be able to be reinstalled securely.

Anyways, you can remove the heatsink by turning the 4 push pins and pulling the heatsink from the motherboard. then, you need to wipe the paste from both the CPU and heatsink. Next, put a pea-sized dot of thermal paste in the middle of the CPU. Finally, turn the push pins back in their original position and push the heatsink back into the mounting holes. You should hear a "click" for each push pin letting you know that they went all the way through the mounting holes and are secure.

 

[Admiral Akmir]

Yes, you most likely messed up the stock paste. I'm not sure how you lifted the heatsink off the CPU though. If it was installed correctly, you shouldn't be able to do that unless you ripped the push pins from the mounting holes. You would have to pull REALLY hard for that to happen. If that is indeed what happened, then the heatsink may not be able to be reinstalled securely.

Anyways, you can remove the heatsink by turning the 4 push pins and pulling the heatsink from the motherboard. then, you need to wipe the paste from both the CPU and heatsink. Next, put a pea-sized dot of thermal paste in the middle of the CPU. Finally, turn the push pins back in their original position and push the heatsink back into the mounting holes. You should hear a "click" for each push pin letting you know that they went all the way through the mounting holes and are secure.

Oh yes, I guess I wasn't too clear in my original post, I did unscrew the four pins and unlock the cooler. My assumption was that the fan would lift off and the heatsink would stay there, but it's actually one unit and the whole thing came up. It's been over a year since I installed the system and the last one I worked on was an athlon processor where the heat sink is attached with it's own little bar and the fan can be unscrewed and lifted off independently, that's the style of cooler that I'm used to.

So I'll go and redo the paste right now, when I finish can I expect lower temps than I had with the stock thermal pad?

 

[MattNo5ss]

Good to hear that the cooler was removed correctly.

As long as you get a good mount and don't use too much or too little thermal paste, then I would expect temps to be a little better with the new thermal paste. Nothing drastically different though.

 

[Admiral Akmir]

It had been so long since I installed the cooler that I forgot how it went on. When I took it off earlier I didn't fasten it back down all the way and it was kind of loose... I'm actually pretty surprised I held up in the game as long as I did.

Everything is up and running now and the temps are good and cool. Haven't broken 50 yet while playing the same game.