More Grease

Here’s a note we got from Arctic Silver:

—–Original Message—–
From: Arctic Silver, Inc. [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: Monday, April 28, 2003 1:39 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: AMD Warranty

Joe,

One more thing that may not be fully understood by your readers is that AMD only provides a warranty on their boxed processors.

As they say on their site…

AMD’s Limited Processor Warranty does not cover non-boxed products purchased from resellers.

AMD only provides a warranty on its line of boxed processors.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_867,00.html.

There is no AMD warranty on OEM “tray” processors so there is no AMD warranty to void by using thermal grease.

And on the boxed processors, you MUST use the supplied heatsink and thermal pad to maintain the warranty…

This Limited Warranty shall be null and void if the AMD microprocessor which is the subject of this Limited Warranty is used with any heatsink/fan other than the one provided herewith.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_867_2139,00.html.

I hope this helps clear things up,

Nevin

For overclockers (well, at least honest ones), this is much ado about nothing because overclocking all by itself voids the warranty.

However, as the Inquirer has subsequently pointed out, AMD’s insistence on use of just one particular type of thermal grease does appear to violate U.S. law

Granted, the violation could easily be fixed by changing the wording of the warranty to something more generic, like “only thermal greases with non-metallic content” or something like that.

How Does This Compare To Intel?

Both companies have equivalent policies for non-boxed processors.

The AMD Limited Warranty on boxed processors can be found here.

The equivalent Intel warranty can be found here.

While the two warranties are mostly alike, the Intel warranty makes no mention of having to use specific types of thermal grease, or for that matter, the provided fan/heatsink (though it’s at least arguable that if you didn’t, that could be called “improper installation.”

So Where’s The Grease Police

The issue here is not the legalities, but the practicalities.

I remember winning a small prize in a contest once, and signing the terms for acceptance of that prize literally authorized the company to sell any image they took of me for any purpose, forever, throughout the whole universe.

So not only did this allow them in theory to sell my image for use in porn, but even alien porn.

I guess that’s one way to fend off an invasion. 🙂

Lawyers can be ludicrous sometimes. It was especially ludicrous given that the company wasn’t using winners for any kind of publicity.

These warranty conditions fall into that category. Short of a literal short in the processor and some remnant of thermal grease, how would they ever know?

Ergo, the need for the grease police.

No grease police, then it’s more like being used in Ferrengi porn centuries from now.

We Ask

Have any of you had to warranty an Intel or AMD boxed processor? I’m not talking about dealing with the reseller, I’m talking about with the CPU companies themselves.

What was your experience? Did they raise any issues about what you might have done with the processor? Should they have raised any issues about what you might have done with the processor?

No quotes or attributions on this one. 🙂

You know where to find me.

Email Ed