newbie retail HSF question

B

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[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 14, 2004
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Ok, I am pretty sure the answer to this is a rock solid YES, but I figured I'd better ask.
I'm currently in spain and he is in seattle or I would just run over to his place to check.

A co-worker bought parts for an A64 system and is in the process of assembling it.

He read instructions and thought there was no TIM on the retail HSF. I asked him what the bottom of the HSF looks like, and he said there were squares of grey on the bottom. I told him that was the TIM and he was good to go. Before he gets back home tonight to put it together, I figured I'd just verify that since I have yet to put together an A64 system and have not seen what the retail HSF looks like.

Retail HSFs ALWAYS have a basic, waxy TIM on there, don't they?

BB
 
i don't know for sure, but i think some come with an actual paste.
have him take a picture of the thing for you and look ;)
 
The retail Athlon64 3000+ I used in my wife's computer had a silvery one on there, in a perfect square pattern.. Very similar to the popular silver compounds you get in the syringes. Not like the old pads from the days of yore.
 
Some are the pink sticky as hell kind others have the soft silvery kind. I just hope your buddy was smart enough to take off any plastic tim protector before he mounted the HSF
 
Every retail A64 heatsink I've seen has a gray TIM pad, so if it has a gray square in the middle, he's fine. ;) Even heard that the pad on the A64's isn't too horrid of stuff, perhaps made by Shin Etsu.
 
The default thermal pad on there isn't bad, and yes, I've heard it was Shin Etsu also, wouldn't be surprised if it was. I'd only remove it for the sake of easier clean-up in the future. But if this is going to be more of a permanent installation, the thermal pad on there will do the job.
 
The TIM that came on my 3000+winnie works fine. I have mine o/c'd to 2.7ghz on stock air if that helps any. LIke a previous poster said, make sure you take off the plastic film protector on it.
 
Yah my stock HSF came with a dark grey patch already stamped on. I think it was a square with little square patterns...the odd thing was that I didn't find any sort of plastic slip covering the paste/pad.
 
Same here. Was worried I'd missed something and might have some melted plastic on my heat spreader :eek:
 
ok, 2 questions then, what the hell does TIM stand for. i think you mean thermal paste?

and if a amd 64 bit processor is bought, would arctic silver 5 paste be better than the pad?
 
tim = thermal interface material

and yes, as5 is way better than the stock tim. not just in terms of temps, but also removability

(i need sleep :()
 
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