Replace thermal compound?

[scottmso]

My "secondary" computer is a Dell with a Pentium 4. Recently I took off the heatsink just to look under it. I noticed that it had some kind of pink thermal compound stuck onto the heatsink (about none on the CPU.) Should I take that off and replace it with my Arctic Silver? Thanks

 

[Viper2004]

WELCOME TO THE FORUMS

I think doing that is a great idea. Who knows, might make that dell have decent temps.

 

[dicecca112]

replaced the pad on my buddy's dell, and his random restarts disappeared. I thought they were heat related, not sure, but it corrected the problem. It can't hurt any to replace it.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Thermal pads are terrible at transferring heat (many times they do more insulation than heat conducting), but companies use them because they're cheap and easy to put on. Definately replace it with AS if you feel you can, and be sure to get it completely off (run Prime or something to get the CPU really hot then turn it off and remove the heatsink right away so the pad is still a little melted).

 

[intx]

I'm assuming you've already removed the heatsink off the cpu by your description. Once you've done that, the thermal pad's effectiveness is useless (or at least not performing as it should). You 'have' to replace it with either another thermal pad, or thermal paste now.

 

[arabarabian]

I am thinking about doing that to my Dell laptop to get it to cool a little better but it is not the easiest to open.

 

[overXposure]

i removed the old thermal pad off one of my junk dells and put as5 in it's place .. dropped the cpu temp by 6 deg (this was on a p3 700) ... so i think it is worth it ...

 

[Radical]

Go ahead, anything is better than those thermal pads. I don't know why Dell uses them wehn they have those cool CPU ducts in their computers.

 

[mantrogo]

Now you've removed the HS from the CPU the pad is "ruined" anyway. So yes, you'll have to replace it.

Clean off the goop on the underside of the HS and on the CPU with isopropyl alcohol. Don't use rubbing alcohol - that'll leave residues behind that will reduce the effectiveness of the thermal junction between HS and CPU. You can get pure (99 or 99.5%) isopropyl from RadioShack / Maplins (depending where you are...).

Agree with other posts - using AS or some such rather than a pad will give excellent results.

 

[Senater_Cache]

DEFINATELY replace that POS. Pads are horrible.

Make sure you really get all of th pad off of the cpu and HS, while not scratching the HS surface much.

CLean that thing with alcohol and dont touch the cleaned HS part. (oil is bad for temps !!

 

[intx]

pads are not that bad. they work better for pernament installations.

 

[overXposure]

- they work better for an assembly line production, but what most of them are made of is not as good as transferring heat as a dab of AS5 ... -

 

[intx]

someone did a little home made test, the differences between thermal compound is actually quite small. And that, toothpaste is actually better than any thermal compound. (For the record, toothpaste wouldn't work because it'd dry up.)

I read somewhere on another forum that AS5 actually 'runs' over a long period of time, and needs to be replaced. However AS5 is probably slightly better than a pad as paste.

 

[Busty St. Clair]

well it would be better to replace it with as5 but it will seperate in a few months if you are looking for a long term solution use ceramique.

 

[Silversinksam]

pads are not that bad. they work better for pernament installations.

Thermal Pads are aweful, the worst thermal paste will outperform it by a wide margin.



http://www.heatsink-guide.com/paste.htm