TwistedBard

I am in agreement with mark. If you've still got a warmer than you'd like CPU and your airflow seems good inside the case, then go with a better heatsink fan and definitely use the artic silver.

If I were going to make a suggesion on that, I'd go with one made by Zalman. Sorry, I don't know the model number off the top of my head for your processor, but check any decent online computer retailer that sells Zalman products and you should be able to find it. They're a little pricier than some, but not obscenely so, and in my opinion, they're the best and they're pretty quiet.

Sarkast

I'd have to agree with Mark and please let me try to explain why.
I looked your temps: Idle 42 Load 65+
From my experience with heatsinks a huge diffrence between the IDLE and LOAD temp (and you got ~25 degrees) usually means one (or both) of these 2 things:

1) The heat transfer between the CPU and HSF is poor - meaning the installed thermal paste cant transfer heat fast enough from the CPU to the HSF to allow the HSF to actually remove it. Even with stock HSF you can sometimes improve your temps by 5 and more degrees when you use AS5 instead of the factory pad.

2) The HSF just cant handle the ammount of heat produced by the processor. Even lowering the intake temp a few more degrees will have a much lower effect than you might aim for.

Of course you can try drilling holes in the side, installing a fan - but i believe instead of a 5$ fan you'll have better results trying a 5$ tube of AS5 even if you dont want to switch HSF yet.

lobsterboy

ok...please bear with my baby steps on this, but just so I'm sure I'm following here:

What Sarkast is saying makes a lot of sense to me. Since adding the fans, my mobo temp (which I'm assuming is the same as the "intake" temp) has dropped 8-10c on average. This temp doesn't increase much under load -- only about 2c -- compared to the ~25c increase in the cpu temp. So I'm not sure how much good it will do me to lower the mobo temp, or even if I could.

As for the thermal paste, this sounds like it might be a solution (without going into too much detail at the moment, if the builder of this machine doesn't generally put case fans in his systems, I'm guessing there's a good chance he might not have applied the thermal paste properly?).

Having never taken off a HSF before, or even seen a tube of Arctic Silver, is this something I could/should attempt myself?

TwistedBard

Yes, you certainly could. Whether you should or not depends mostly on your level of comfort with trying it. It isn't particularly difficult, though it does require certain care to be taken (i.e., you have to be careful of static electricity). But I am sure you could do it. I would even bet that someone here knows a good site that has instructions you could follow.

kranky

Lots of people have done it, but I won't do it myself because I'm not willing to risk frying my CPU by doing it wrong. If you choose to try it, here are a couple of tips. Most people don't carefully follow the Arctic Silver directions and cause themselves problems, so please read them carefully.

Look carefully at how the HSF posts are aligned while they are still attached, especially how they look from below the mobo. Some people think it's been reattached properly when it hasn't. So if you look to see what it looks like before you start, you'll know when you have it back in place. If you don't have it mounted properly, the HSF can't do it's job.

Wait for other advice before trying it since I've never done it myself. I'm just passing along what I've heard from many others.

mark3567

Hi,

Been there and done that while building and upgrading computers. They can be tricky, but no big deal on most of them. Just be sure that you are grounded while working in these areas or you can harm your processor and many other things. I know some that don't pay any attention to that, but I always do, so just do that rather than be sorry. Just never enter a computer case without grounding yourself to the case. I (this will sound funny) usually when i don't need two hands, just hold on to the side of the case. When I first started building used one of those grounding straps, but that became too much of a pain in the uh...neck.

What I do (the thermal paste tends to stick to both surfaces) is to unclamp the fan and heatsink and carefully remove the fan from the top of the heatsink. Be careful that you don't harm anything else although there is quite a bit of space around them.

Next, I gently slide or wiggle the heatsink back and forth to break the (seal, for the lack of a better word) adhesion of the paste to the CPU. When you can (again gently) move it and lift slightly being careful not to put too much up pressure on the CPU. It should come off of there pretty easily. Just lift it out.

Next, you need to clean both the CPU chip on top and the heatsink with alcohol (or they have a commercial cleaner that I don't bother with) or some other cleaner. Make sure you don't get any paste anyplace else on the CPU and if you decide to take the CPU out (by lifting clamps up and lifting) to clean, just be careful with it.

If you get the thermal paste in the CPU holes in the motherboard or on the pins on the cpu, then you definitely are in trouble and will probably end up replacing some things like the motherboard or cpu. When you put the cpu back in, make sure the little pin one matches pin one on the motherboard recepticle slot for the CPU. If you just watch which way you took it out it is easy, or even look at the pin alignment of the CPU to the board. To the best of my knowlege, I have never damaged one taking it out or putting it in (tongue in cheek).

I won't even tell you about the paste because their website explains it better than I could. If you get too much on, it is as bad as not getting enought on, so be careful on that. Please just read this since I just do them without reading anymore:

http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_s...structions.htm

When it is done and you have the Artic Silver applied, just reverse taking off the heatsink and fan. An important thing to watch is to make sure the CPU is seated firmly before you latch it down and make sure the heatsink and heatsink fan are seated clear down before closing the clamps.

I know this process sounds very hard, but it is just quite easy if you follow directions. If I get a link someplace you can read will post it later in the day.

Anyway, hope this helps.

lobsterboy

It does sound complicated, but if it comes down to trusting this to the guy in the shop that thinks case fans aren't really neccessary, and trusting myself -- it's a bit of a no-brainer.

If I decide that I'm not quite up to the challenge, any ideas how much they might charge me in a shop to do something like this?

Sarkast

The page Mark suggested is great and if you follow the steps carefully its actually a pretty simple process. I also ground myself with a wrist strap while working inside my PC case.

I would also like to suggest this link:

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/rese...atsink_support

Its very comprehensive about all the details involved when installing a heatsink for your socket - and i assume that what you have installed right now is the one described there.

What should really help you is that in the past (for example socket 478) the problem was that the by Mark described "seal" (or bond) between the CPU and HS sometimes pulled the CPU out of the socket when you tried to remove the HSF even though the CPU was clamped down. Some people damaged their pins that way.
However your CPU socket is diffrent and you cant really pull the CPU off with the HS by mistake because of the way it is locked down.
You also dont have pins on the back of the CPU that you can damage.

If you follow the directions i really think this will make a big diffrence for you. The newer Intel HS are actually pretty powerful - although a little noisy. Its just that intel limits its cooling capabilities by using these low performance pads.

mark3567

Hi,

Probably not too much if you buy a better heatsink and fan from them. This job takes (for someone who knows what they are doing and has the stuff ready to go) only about fifteen or twenty minutes total as a guess.

There is the possibility that if you have a shop do it that sells you the heatsink and fan, they might throw in enough artic silver to do the job without you having to buy it, because it only takes a small drop of the stuff. One of those Artic Silver tubes will last a lifetime for someone who does not do this much. ha ha

There are some that are so easy that ten minutes will do the job. Kind of depends upon how much goo to clean off and how hard the heatsink comes off. It is not really as bad of a job as it sounds. Experience makes it very easy, but if you were doing it, plan on about thirty minutes or maybe more.

lobsterboy

Reading it all over, I think I might be able to pull it off. Being a thorough (some would say anal) sort, though, I'll read up on it as much as possible before giving it a try. I'm not as worried as I was about an imminent meltdown anymore...thanks to all here.

I've already started a list of questions from what I've read on your posts & the links you've given me...but I'm wondering if maybe I should start a new thread specifically for heat sink/as5 removal & reinstallation for LGA775s? Or does it make more sense to keep going with this one?

TwistedBard

I vote start a new one, just so we all can feel like we accomplished something. LOL. You do whatever makes you happy, though. I'm kinda new here myself, but I don't think there's a rule for that. :)

mark3567

Hi,

I will close this one and you can post anther one.