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remember the first time you used thermal paste?

T

THRESHIN

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 29, 2002
Messages
3,930
ok nostalgia time everyone!

as there was once a time when your cpu didn't need any thermal paste - just the bare heatsink - who remembers the first time they actually used it?

for me it was quite a few years back...had the old slot 1 celeron 333 and i had just started learning the mysterious ways of overclocking. since those old slot 1 heatsinks made just terrible contact and had nothing under them i decided it was about high time that something be done. i had heard of this 'thermal paste' which i knew nothing of at the time - went down to the computer store and the guy was kind enough to give me a small spare tube of the dreaded white stuff.

and wow what a difference that made:D i think it must have dropped over 10ºC! until i overclocked it some more of course...

i think its interesting to think of how far we've come for cooling. even look at heatpipes, who'd have predicted that one?
 
I've only started building systems since 2004, so thermal paste was already a common commodity by then. My build was an Athlon 64 3200+ on a DFI Lanparty UT Ultra-D, and the stock AMD 939 heatsink was a huge pain the ass to install. It was my first build, so I wanted to get the thermal paste all spread out perfectly. I had to remount the heatsink several times in case I messed up and got air pockets underneath. I was using AS5, so cleaning it off after every remount was also a pain.

For home use, I still have the same 3.5 gram tube of AS5 from that first build. It's almost used up now. My Ultra-120 Extreme came with a huge tube of Chill Factor, so I'm good for another 5 years or so.

I've probably mounted CPU heatsinks hundreds of times since then. Nowadays I just squeeze a bit of paste on the CPU and slap the heatsink on. Imperfect thermal paste application is not the end of the world like some people lead you to believe.
 
although the s939 heatsinks were a little bit painful i found the heatsinks for the athlon xp's to be just utter bastards. i had an old TT volcano 6 on it i think, and you had to push hard with a flathead screwdriver. very scary when it slips and slams into the mobo:)
 
THRESHIN said:
there was once a time when your cpu didn't need any thermal paste - just the bare heatsink
Click to expand...

My first computer's CPU didn't even use a heatsink. The earliest NMOS processors were kinda warm. Then they brought out the first CMOS processors and they were positively cool under load. An 8MHz 8086 didn't need a heatsink - I can't remember whether the first 80286 chips used heatsinks or whether it was the later, faster 80286s or the 386s that first made heatsinks standard.
 
LoL the first time I used thermal paste I used the whole tube thinking well they gave me a full tube guess that means use a full tube or it might over heat!!!! needless to say I used way to much and it squirted over the sides onto the motherboard when I put on the CPU cooler. Those were the days...
 
THRESHIN said:
although the s939 heatsinks were a little bit painful i found the heatsinks for the athlon xp's to be just utter bastards. i had an old TT volcano 6 on it i think, and you had to push hard with a flathead screwdriver. very scary when it slips and slams into the mobo:)
Click to expand...

lol yeah I hated removing the hs from my socket A system. My case was cramped and it was a real pita to get at.
 
THRESHIN said:
although the s939 heatsinks were a little bit painful i found the heatsinks for the athlon xp's to be just utter bastards. i had an old TT volcano 6 on it i think, and you had to push hard with a flathead screwdriver. very scary when it slips and slams into the mobo:)
Click to expand...

haha, I had that same HSF and to this day I am suprised that mobo didn't have a hole in it next to the CPU.
 
Back before the interweb and most adults in my life seemed to want to keep computer knowledge away from me in the same way that mechanics like to keep their customers in the dark, I hadn't known how to nor how much to apply of the stuff on a DX4-100@120. I picked up a tube of the silicone/zinc oxide with the blue stripe from RatShack, used my bare finger to spread it like peanut butter, nice and thick-like, thinking more is better. Good thing there was a lot of margin for error back then :D The interweb sure makes things a lot easier and safer.
 
THRESHIN said:
although the s939 heatsinks were a little bit painful i found the heatsinks for the athlon xp's to be just utter bastards. i had an old TT volcano 6 on it i think, and you had to push hard with a flathead screwdriver. very scary when it slips and slams into the mobo:)
Click to expand...
The AMD RS780M (Puma platform) reference motherboard uses a similar heatsink mounting mechanism. You take a big flat head screwdriver and push down on either side of the latch. One little slip and your CPU is dead, since the Turions don't have heatspreaders. I crushed a Turion ZM-80 the first time I tried to mount one of those heatsinks.
 
My 486SX 33 didn't have a heatsink and the heatsink and fan on my P100 was smaller than current day chipset heatsinks.

 
Stock cooling. Now, looking back, I used waaay too much.

My methods for spreading it still remain almost the same. Spread over CPU with plastic wrap, then place heatsink. Except I now wipe off excess. Works like a charm.
 
THRESHIN said:
although the s939 heatsinks were a little bit painful i found the heatsinks for the athlon xp's to be just utter bastards. i had an old TT volcano 6 on it i think, and you had to push hard with a flathead screwdriver. very scary when it slips and slams into the mobo:)
Click to expand...

first time I did this I cut a slot into the end of a large flat head to prevent it from happening... then life went on.
 
At first when I was working with p-1 200 MMX systems my dad's work threw away [they were still pretty new at the time, p-3's were just coming out, I think] well I was wondering why it had bubblegum under the heatsink, then I also remember running a k-6-3 400 with no heatsink to check if it worked, only powering it up for 4 or 5 seconds and it locked up. I was pissed!
 
THRESHIN said:
although the s939 heatsinks were a little bit painful i found the heatsinks for the athlon xp's to be just utter bastards. i had an old TT volcano 6 on it i think, and you had to push hard with a flathead screwdriver. very scary when it slips and slams into the mobo:)
Click to expand...

Didn't bother to take my old Socket A mobo out of the case, tried to take off heatsink... stabbed the motherboard and broke it. This happened several times too...

Although I still would prefer that method over the 775 pushpins.
 
directions for the MB was usualy to put a piece of cardboard under where you are stabbing for socket A, I slipped 1000 times and never hurt anything in the process :) Chips ran fine with chipped core corners too heh,
 
THRESHIN said:
although the s939 heatsinks were a little bit painful i found the heatsinks for the athlon xp's to be just utter bastards. i had an old TT volcano 6 on it i think, and you had to push hard with a flathead screwdriver. very scary when it slips and slams into the mobo:)
Click to expand...

And that is why you are supposed to use a small nutdriver instead of a flathead screwdriver.
 
I think the first time I used thermal paste was when I was overclocking a 486-DX2-66 to a sweet 80Mhz.

I do remember my first water cooling setup... I even made the waterblock myself.... and I used a peltier cooler. That was on a AMD K6-2 It cooled too well.. iced the CPU and surrounding area completely up.
The pump was a fishtank water pump for an underground filter.. Didn't even have a radiator.. used an Igloo cooler to hold the water.



I still have that waterblock... It would probably work perfectly fine on my Q6600.
 
lol yeah my 386 didn't even have a heatsink back in the day. My first 486 dx2-66 had one though, it was TINY though, like 1cm high and a lol-able gap between each fin

good times
 
the first time i used thermal paste was last night lol. its wasnt as bad as i thought, now im thinking of putting some as5 on my 4850 hmm
 
My first systems didn't need any thermal paste since the heatsink and cpu just had to make contact. Then there were the p3 ages where the hsf was built into the whole slot chip, but I remeber the socket A days. crazy stuff back then! I had a soyo mobo that would allow a p4 like heatsink, and I received the ThermalTake tower from thermaltake to review...
 
First time I used it was fixing the overheat issue with the 9700 Pro in 2003, replaced stock heatink for a Zalman HP (stupid .2 mm too large GPU shim).
 
1972, on a TO-3 case transistor with a mica insulator...



First time on a CPU? IIRC, 1997, AMD 5x86-133. As others here have noted, CPU heatsinks and fans back then were tiny compared to today's chipset coolers.
 
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