solidified paste between heatsink/cpu, wierd

[Chris583]

Okay so I was gonna prep and old system to run as a server, and I have a n old Dell XPS 2nd gen, eww I know, the cpu is p4 ht 3.4ghz and figured out how to remove the heat sink but when i lifted it off I noticed the CPU was attached to the heatsink!!!!

it seems pretty solidly stuck onto the heatsink and cannot be pried off by hand, so i took a knife and wedge it and the cpu popped right off!

But I was curious, does anyone knows why this has happened? Its about a 4yr old machine that some good stress in its prime with gaming and such.

Is this normal for a pc that has not been regularly cleaned nor ever had its heatsink removed?

 

[BlindedByScience]

Perfectly normal.

Keep in mind most OEM's don't use "paste" but instead a wax-like TIM (thermal interface material) that's easier to handle and apply than a paste. When the CPU gets hot, they "melt" a little and get pretty well stuck between the CPU and HS / HSF.

Just be sure to clean the residue off REALLY well before you apply paste and re-assemble the heat sink to the CPU. Alcohol wipes are the bomb for this.....

 

[Chris583]

yeah thats wat i did, 91 isopropyl alcohol and cue tips and cloth, worked great and applied some AS5.


well im gonna ask a question here see if anyone can figure it out if i dont get any answers ill post it elsewhere but

I cleaned up this old pc and plugged it into an old 22inch dell CRT (this thing is like 8years old or so, but it wont work! Its VGA and i tried pluggin it into the desktop im on right now, and my laptop nothing will display! the power button on the front is yellow, and when i unplug the cable from any computer the screen says mointor is working, check signal cable.

This is really buggin me! It worked the other week on a newer pc i building (with vga to dvi converter). But that is not the solution either as trying the the adapter on the old pc or even this one will not yield a signal!?

Is it possible this monitor is simply now broke? Cannot yield a signal, i cannot exchagne the vga plug for a differant one as the cord is built into the monitor. I dont care about this monitor at all but I was setting up a server pc to work with this monitor and have no other not in use monitor to work with!