Heat Spreader my butt

[Toysrme]

Is it just me? Or have some the of rest of you "more observant" people always just tolerated it being called a "heat spreader"

It does nothing for spreading heat.
It's no more or less a heat spreader than the bottom of your Heatsink/Waterblock/Cold plate.

Really they should have just named them "anti-crushing plates".

Here are the points I see good and bad

Bad it's just one more place without perfect contact between the CPU and the heatsink. We use a thermal compound to help heat flow between the CPU and heatsink. They use nothing between the "heat spreader" and the core.

Good it's that much more MASS the heat can be absorbed to.(what two grams?)

Bad it’s not copper and therefore only impedes your nice copper base by that much more.

If you ask me they should have made it more of a shim instead of a "heat spreader". You'd retain slightly better heat transfer and keep the crush protection.

Rant Off

-Toysrme

 

[Paxmax]

Aw yeah.

That "heatspreadder" has to gotta go.
I'm thinking of having it machined off.

An other idea would be to cool it and give it a whack to see if it comes off.

One scare about that method is, how good does the thermal paste between cpu and heatspreadder sit?
I'm afraid of the "vaccum effect" and the chip is sucked so hard to the heatspreadder that it will also *POP* off.

The cooling and whacking method seems to work really good with IC's (like GPU's) and heatsinks.

Well.. as soon as my supercooling rig is done, that cover is bye bye.

/Paxmax

 

[Toysrme]

Well they use to use an epoxy base from what I know.

I'm gonna go get into my FTP/IRC server tomorrow and de top my celery that's in it and see what happens, and if it won't come off easily after I make my cut, Then it goes in a ziplock bag in the freezer for 20-30min just like a video card dose.
<g>

edit

And if it's an epox base, then out comes the acetone and if THAT dosn't work quickly enough I'm pulling out some acid.

 

[AntmanMike]

That wont work Ask Ol' Man what he does. I killed 2 S423 Willies by fudging that up.

 

[Toysrme]

Which part wont work? Be more specific plz.

-Toys

 

[hellrazrblade]

lol, it is very much a heatspreader.
it spreads heat out from the core so that the heatsink has a bigger area to draw heat from.
lay off the diatribes, lol.

 

[AntmanMike]

Acetone will not destroy the epoxy that Intel uses to attach the heatspreader. You have to literally saw away at the epoxy. Ask Ol' Man. Also, the Pentium 4 core is not exactly the strongest

 

[The Overclocker]

the heatspreader is used for one purpose, incase the heatsink falls, off, in normal use almost all of the heat continues to go directly up through the heatspreader.

 

[Since87]

Volenti took the IHS off his P4 for his direct die watercooling project.

I believe he said he took it off with a piece of thread, with which he slowly sawed away at the glue. I imagine that would be pretty tedious, but it would get the job done without damage.

 

[Toysrme]

hrmmm we'll i'm still giving it a try I'll just shoot straight for acid then.

Hellrazor it dose NOT spread heat any more than the bottom of a heatsink/waterblock/coldplate.

Read into what I said in the first post more. Think about it. Logically it spreads no more heat that what was said above.

 

[Toysrme]

You know you cure epoxy resins by heat. You also soften them up using heat... Unfortunatly I don't think a 45 min stay in a 400F over would help the processor all that much

 

[Tecumseh]

The IHS --IS-- copper. It is nickel plated for corrosion protection.
As for it being a heat spreader. That is just pure BS, market-speak
at best. It is really there to keep the core from being crushed.

If you are not afraid to voiding your warranty, razor that sucker
off of there.

 

[Hawk]

Is it just me? Or have some the of rest of you "more observant" people always just tolerated it being called a "heat spreader"

It does nothing for spreading heat.
It's no more or less a heat spreader than the bottom of your Heatsink/Waterblock/Cold plate.

Really they should have just named them "anti-crushing plates".

Here are the points I see good and bad

Bad it's just one more place without perfect contact between the CPU and the heatsink. We use a thermal compound to help heat flow between the CPU and heatsink. They use nothing between the "heat spreader" and the core.

Good it's that much more MASS the heat can be absorbed to.(what two grams?)

Bad it’s not copper and therefore only impedes your nice copper base by that much more.

If you ask me they should have made it more of a shim instead of a "heat spreader". You'd retain slightly better heat transfer and keep the crush protection.

Rant Off

-Toysrme

Just too correct one part. It is copper. It has a coating on it. lapp it a bit and you will see.

 

[Daemonfly]

It IS a heatspreader. But is it needed or does it help performance? No, heh.

It does function as a heatspreader, but not needed, it is basically an anti-core-crush device


Hmm... using it's design, a heatsink with a recess for the CPU core, and a soft o-ring would work well for seating the heatsink onto the core with less risk of core crush.

 

[Caffinehog]

Don't use a razor! Use the metal part from a dead floppy disk! This part will effectively cut the glue, which is more like rubber than epoxy, without damaging traces.

I've removed two of them. And what did I get? Nothing. No cooler temperatuers, no better overclock. I will not be removing one again.

And it IS a heatspreader if you make the mistake of not putting on your heatsink... saves it from AMD's instant inferno death.
And yes, it is plenty easy to make this mistake, especially if your motherboard automatically powers on when you reattach power to it.

 

[Toysrme]

Yeah I lost my first XP2000 which came factory unlocked in the instant inferno of death I had cut out a recess in my waterblock for one of the Compunerse's probes. I just didn't cut it out enough <g>. Yes... don't ever run any CPU without a heatsink my Via C3 600 that I was running would run w/o a heatsink quite awhile, but in the end it would be toast. They will run with a passive heatsink tho <g> quite thrilling! (replaced with the celeron 900 I'm going to take apart)

Don't get me wrong... the heat spreader dose transfer heat, but just like the air around the core... Is it worth it??? I'm betting no.

Didn't know it was copper that was nickle plated. Thanks for the info! I'll be figureing that out tonight I guess ;0)

I'll post some pics in the next few days once I get a chance to borrow a dig camera.

Caffine, what motherboard powers on when you reatch power to it? I've never seen that! Be sure that you power it off in the proper way before you cut power to it. I've had sevrial do that. But only because I just pulled the power to cut it off.

 

[Since87]

And it IS a heatspreader if you make the mistake of not putting on your heatsink... saves it from AMD's instant inferno death.

It is my understanding, that it is the P4's ability to throttle back the clock, which prevents it from overheating with inadequate cooling.

 

[Caffinehog]

Caffine, what motherboard powers on when you reatch power to it? I've never seen that! Be sure that you power it off in the proper way before you cut power to it. I've had sevrial do that. But only because I just pulled the power to cut it off.

Yeah, that's exactly why.... but still easy enough to do....

 

[Caffinehog]

Removing the heatspreader for me gave no gain either time. In fact, one time I lost 16mhz, and the other time I lost 40. I don't attribute that to the loss of the heatspreader... I rather think it was just that the pressure on the core was less and therefore the heat transfer was less. But in any case, I didn't gain anything from the removal. This would probably be a different story with phase change cooling, though.

 

[Toysrme]

Cool. So then I'm right and it has nothing t do with he heat transfer. Picked up the comp. Backing up files to another computer so I can work on it as long as I need too without loosing my file hosting abilities.

-Toysrme