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Cooling mod gone wrong + question regarding replacement

E

Elledan

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - April 2010
Joined
Oct 18, 2001
Messages
15,913
First of all, allow me to say that a burned CPU smells not nearly as bad as I expected. It's a kind of pleasantly sweet smell, actually.

So, I was installing a duct from the HSF (Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCu) when I noticed that one of the screws used for screwing down the HSF to the supports (I had removed the HSF prior to the mod to clean it) was missing. In my infinite wisdom I decided to use another screw from my big pile o' screws. No problem, right?

To make a long story short, the replacement screw was too long, causing the HSF to touch the CPU's die at an angle. I don't think that this AXP 1700+ survived longer than a few seconds during the first test run...

RIP, poor CPU. It has been far too short since I first met you :(

*wipes away a tear*

Anyway, for a replacement I've decided on a Sempron (Sempr0n?) 2500+, which will arrive tomorrow with any luck. However, since it's a retail version, meaning that it comes with the standard HSF, I'm deciding whether I should use this Zalman HSF or go with the retail one. Two factors weighing heavily in favour of the latter are my recent mishap with the former (once bitten, twice shy, I guess) and the fact that I'm running kind of low on thermal paste, as in, I'm afraid I won't have enough for a single installation.

In other words, for a Sempron 2500+ (what's the TDP rating of this one compared to the AXP 1700+ one's, anyway?) will the retail HSF suffice, or am I better off with the Zalman?
 
The stock cooler will suffice for a non OC'ed system but the thermal pad that comes on AMD retail sinks is a major mess to remove should you ever decide to go with an aftermarket cooler later.

I know the pad's all pink and soft and gummy and it's actually fairly effective but after a few months of heating it gets hard and adheres to the core like a cross between superglue and cheap epoxy, removing it all is a major chore.
 
And in the case that I can squeeze sufficient thermal paste out of the nearly empty tubes I've got lying around and decide to remove the thermal pad?

I don't overclock, by the way :D
 
The thermal pad will be very hard to remove when you want to. Even then, there will always be traces of it. I installed some ram sinks with thermal pads to an 9800pro once. To get everything off, i had to sand the ram down a bit. If I can, I would try to find that thermal grease. Heck, if you want, email me your address and I can send to you the thermal grease that came with my waterchill kit from asetek (I used arctic silver 5) if I can find it. If not, I always have some grease including two arctic silver 3. Free of charge. Besides 37 cents for stamps is not a big deal. Just can't stand someone else going through the hassle of removing thermal pad like I did.
 
That's a most kind offer of you, magnuspah :)

Fortunately, I've some experience with removing thermal pads from HSFs (not an OEM, but a Spire one. It also had the pink one), and I still have some good sand paper (600 and 800).

Also, I found that I still have some thermal grease which came with the Zalman Northbridge heatsink I installed a while ago, so I should be covered until the Arctic Silver I ordered recently finally arrives.

(on a sidenote, that 37 cents would be quite expensive once you take in account shipping costs to Europe :p )
 
I find that using something hard enough to remove the pad, but soft enough not to scratch up the heatsink tends to be the trick. I use a pen cap (plastic) to scrape off most of the gunk, and then a nice solvent to take care of the rest. If you have the tools (flat/glass surface) I'd say lapping the stock hsf couldn't hurt (600 then 800 grit should be fine, not a mirror finish, but flat for sure) as they aren't exactly machined great. Hey, if you aren't worried about OC'ing though, why even bother? The temps won't change too much, unless you're really worried about extending the life of the CPU from 8 years to 9 years (just an example). I'd say undervolting it would be better, as temps will go down while the frequency will stay the same, just prime95 it to be sure of stability.
I'm not really a fan of that burnt electrical smell, to this day when a cfl bulb goes out in my room sometimes I'll check my PC first.
 
Now that you mention it, undervolting has become all the rage recently :)

I don't know what options my mainboard offers, though. It's a Gigabyte K7VRXP, with the stock BIOS. I've got to have the manual lying around here somewhere...

I'll definitely take a look into this, as I consider a silent, cool system to be quite important ;)
 
Elledan said:
Fortunately, I've some experience with removing thermal pads from HSFs (not an OEM, but a Spire one. It also had the pink one), and I still have some good sand paper (600 and 800).
Click to expand...
I found that using carburetor cleaner that I had lying around worked really well for removing my old thermal pad. No sanding was necessary--it just wiped away with a few strokes and it took only a few seconds to do. Then I used isopropyl alcohol to remove any residue. If you have GoofOff or some other xylene based cleaner, I'm sure that will work well.

Try using a good wax solvent before you break out the sandblaster ;) . I should mention that I cleaned off the stock Intel thermal pad with ease--I don't know about AMD, but I'd imagine that it's a similar material.
 
Yes, the pink paste. hated it. It came on the Northbridge heatsink on my P4P800-E, and to get it of, i mate sre it was very warm, or hot, and then i peeled it, but it stuck like bubble gum, so i rubbed it and it came off fairly well, then i cleaned it and applied my own grease. About a 10 degree drop in NB temps... nice!!!
 
What's about the lowest voltage is could drop the core voltage of a Sempron 2500+ to, considering that its default voltage is specified as 1.6 V?

Thanks for the advice on removing those darn thermal pads, by the way :)


[edit]: For a Thoroughbred-B based Sempron 2500+ core voltage is 1.6 and Icc is 38.75 (max), which means a thermal dissipation of around 62 W (typical 55.9 W). If I were to lower the core voltage to 1.4 V, max dissipation would decrease to 54.25 W, or around 50 W typical.

Sounds good to me :)

[edit2]: The Gigabyte mainboard doesn't seem to support an FSB higher than 266, while the Sempron uses a 333 FSB. Can I just increase the multiplier (12.5/13) to compensate? Also, I didn't see any options to decrease the core voltage in the BIOS.
 
I've decided on a Sempron (Sempr0n?) 2500+

LOL ill never look at that word the same....if anyone else got that

neways...sorry to hear about your cooking experience...at least it wasnt a high end cpu
 
darknite said:
I've decided on a Sempron (Sempr0n?) 2500+

LOL ill never look at that word the same....if anyone else got that
Click to expand...
It's what happens when one visits Slashdot one time too often ;)

neways...sorry to hear about your cooking experience...at least it wasnt a high end cpu
Click to expand...
It was high-end when I bought it ^_-
 
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