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heat sinking

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

I have learned something interesting about modern PC CPU cooling. When I went to return the heat sink that I'd bought for my CPU, the shop didn't have any more of the thermal paste that they use to ensure that the entire CPU is in contact with the heat sink (the stuff I currently have on the CPU looked a bit like a mix between tooth-paste and clay, and it's apparently a very VERY good conductor). So I went across the street in the computers & electronics ghetto at Spadina and College, and bought some of the thermal paste at another store.

The sales person referred me to a technician when I asked him a question or two, and I wound up chatting with the fellow for a good while in the blazing 30C heat about CPU cooling.

I told him my initial problem - that my CPU was conking out from time to time, and that the PCU monitor I used told me that the temperature was floating around 70C. I also told that when I'd removed the old heat sink on my system to replace it, I'd scraped off the old thermal paste - which had become brittle and broken - so that the CPU would be clean for the replacement heat sink. Then when I'd gone to attach the new heat sink, it was obvious that the new one wasn't going to fit the CPU, and that I'd have to put the old one back on.

The only problem with this was that there would now be no thermal paste between the CPU and heat sink, so I'd applied the small amount of thermal paste that had come with the new heat sink to the CPU, and put the old heat sink back in place and made do for the night because the shop was already closed.

It turned out that the CPU temperature (according to the monitor) never got above 45C. He told me that this was a good temperature. But he added that replacing the thermal paste was something that should be done every 18-24 months anyway.

So now I have a new heat sink and thermal paste that I don't yet need, but it seems that inevitably the thermal paste will start to loose its efficacy and that I'll be deploying the new stuff sooner or later.