Noob Question

I put together a new machine recently and decided to upgrade my cpu fan. when remove the intel heat sink , I noticed that half of the thermal pad that was on the heat sink was on the cpu and the other half was on the heat sink.

Questions are? Do I need to remove that thermal pad if it's difficult to remove? will it be affective enough to add artic silver and new heat sink with partial thermal pad on cpu? If notd how do I get that dang thing off without damage

Cpu is Intel4 3.0Ghz brand new with hyper thread tech. 800mhz

just trying to cool her down she was running close 60oC idle . may because its brand new. It take a while for new cpu to burn in right.

 

Yes, you must remove the pad. I use a small PLASTIC putty knife to do that with. You could use an old credit card or something too I suppose. Just don't use anything metal. After removing the pad, use a cloth slightly dampened with alcohol, and clean the top of the processor chip, as well as the heatsinks bottom. You can go to the Artic Silver website for instruction on how to properly apply new thermal paste. If you're replacing the heat sink as well as the fan, choose one carefully. There are some out there that look like mean coolers, but really aren't. I've noticed the best results with aluminum sinks, that have the copper insert in them. Copper seems best for "drawing" heat away from something, but aluminum is best for dissipating heat. So the combination of the two seems to be the ideal setup. But also read around in this forum. You'll find that it's very important to make sure the air that the processor fan is taking in, is cool. So if you don't have it ducted to the outside of the case, you need to make sure the case itself is well ventilated, so the processor fan isn't just blowing hot case air over the sink.

 

Thanks Bc everythings worked out fine , nice and cool had to switch aux fan around to change the airflow. all is good now.