Applying thermal grease to Heatpipe Direct Touch coolers

edited February 2009 in Hardware
Hi. I'm about to get my first H.D.T cooler. The Core-Contact Freezer for L775 Intel. It like many others now have the heatpipes exposed as the actual base. It however has tiny trenches in between the heat pipes. Normally when applying thermal grease you use as little as possible because on an ideal setup, it spreads micron thin.

What do I do about these trenches? I thought I would just fill them in and use something like a credit card to make a perfectly smooth surface across the baseplate. Then I thought when it heats up it might drizzle out onto my board. I think now maybe I should just very lightly cover the heat pipes since they actually touch the processor plate and avoid any excess.

Can anyone share any experiences? I'll be using Arctic Silver 5. Thanks.

Comments

  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    You are on the right track. Fill in the groves. There should be no air space at all between the base and the CPU's heatspreader. Then apply two parallel lines of thermal paste. The guys at Benchmarkreviews did a lot testing with direct contact heatsinks. Their findings, with excellent photographs, are here. I use their recommended method on two Core Contact Freezers and an OCZ Vendetta II. It has worked very well with thick pastes, such as TX-2 and Arctic Silver 5. No, you don't need to be concerned about the paste leaching out of the grooves. Stiction will keep it in place.
  • edited January 2009
    Thanks for that link Leonardo it was exactly what I needed.
  • KometeKomete Member
    edited January 2009
    Leonardo wrote:
    You are on the right track. Fill in the groves. There should be no air space at all between the base and the CPU's heatspreader. Then apply two parallel lines of thermal paste. The guys at Benchmarkreviews did a lot testing with direct contact heatsinks. Their findings, with excellent photographs, are here. I use their recommended method on two Core Contact Freezers and an OCZ Vendetta II. It has worked very well with thick pastes, such as TX-2 and Arctic Silver 5. No, you don't need to be concerned about the paste leaching out of the grooves. Stiction will keep it in place.

    Leo, that is a great link. I have a cpu cooler with a heatpipe base and have tried various amounts of thermal paste. That explains why I got such bad results when I used less thermal compound. Those grooves are not filled in.


    Hrmm.. neeed more AS5
  • BuddyJBuddyJ Dept. of Propaganda OKC Icrontian
    edited January 2009
    Skip AS5 when you buy your next tube of thermal goop and step up to something like OCZ Freeze. It's cheap, easy to apply, and performs very well.

    It's sooooo much easier to apply. I put three thin lines down the heat pipes on my Xigmatek and got full coverage.
  • KhaosKhaos New Hampshire
    edited February 2009
    I switched from AS5 to MX-2 and it dropped my temps an additional few degrees. Fairly awesome stuff, and it doesn't change consistency with heat like some other pastes do. I don't have experience with OCZ Freeze, but it has gotten very favorable reviews as well. Plus, it's Buddy J approved. WWBJD? He'd use OCZ Freeze.
  • edited February 2009
    Khaos wrote:
    I switched from AS5 to MX-2 and it dropped my temps an additional few degrees. Fairly awesome stuff, and it doesn't change consistency with heat like some other pastes do. I don't have experience with OCZ Freeze, but it has gotten very favorable reviews as well. Plus, it's Buddy J approved. WWBJD? He'd use OCZ Freeze.

    I recently switched to that Tuniq MX-2 also, it came with my CCF so I tried it out. It works awesome. I even used it to replace the factory pad under my gpu cooler. It dropped my gpu temps about 5 degrees C. I also noticed that as time has went on with it temps have gotten even lower on my cpu as well.

    On a related note, I had an old Xbox 360 upstairs with the 3 red ring issue and E 71 (1013) error issue. I put this stuff under the heatsinks and bent those x brackets to give it more tension. The 3 red ring issue went away but i'm still stuck with the E 71 (bad update) issue. Even used the NXE update disk, must be bad flash memory.

    MX-2 is good stuff.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2009
    Sirus, Arctic Cooling MX-2 or Tuniq TX-2? :D Yeah, I know, it's confusing. I haven't used MX-2, but have used TX-2, OCZ Freeze, and Arctic Silver 5. The latter three are all very close in performance, but only the Arctic Silver requires the thermal cycling nonsense to cure and perform at peak level.
  • foolkillerfoolkiller Ontario
    edited February 2009
    He means the Tuniq stuff. Been preaching to me for a week about how wonderful it is compared to AS5.
    Leonardo wrote:
    Sirus, Arctic Cooling MX-2 or Tuniq TX-2? :D Yeah, I know, it's confusing. I haven't used MX-2, but have used TX-2, OCZ Freeze, and Arctic Silver 5. The latter three are all very close in performance, but only the Arctic Silver requires the thermal cycling nonsense to cure and perform at peak level.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2009
    I've been using both Tuniq TX-2 and AS-5 for years. In my experience, AS-5 will outperform TX-2 by about 2C at full load if it is applied exactly as prescribed in Arctic Silver's instructions on their website. The slightly superior performance also requires several days of "thermal cycling." So, at an absolute rating, yes, I'd say AS-5 is better. You might find it interesting though, that my tube of AS-5 hardly ever gets opened. I much prefer TX-2: it's easier to apply and works right away at full potential. Having several systems - multiple CPUs and GPUs, I just can't be bothered with the week-long thermal cycling requirements of Arctic Silver 5. I also use OCZ Freeze. I have found its performance to be almost exactly the same as TX-2. It also requires no thremal cycling for peak performance, but in my opinion is a little bit more difficult to apply than TX-2. I have not tried Arctic Cooling MX2, but I'd like to.
  • foolkillerfoolkiller Ontario
    edited February 2009
    Ugh, that's two votes against me now. Guess I'll have to go buy some and see if I can't get this Q6600 down from 60C under load.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2009
    60C under load for a Q6600 is not a problem. It will run nonstop and do anything you want at that temperature. It's not too hot, not by a long shot. However, if you wish to overlclock and you are already at 60C, well then yes, you need to improve the cooling.
    two votes against me now
    I don't follow. We didn't slam you for anything, did we? If you are talking about Arctic Silver 5, it's great stuff. It's just more of a hassle than some other pastes.
  • foolkillerfoolkiller Ontario
    edited February 2009
    You misunderstand. I just mean that now I have two opinions that say it's good so now I MUST try it, heh. Just to see.

    Btw, my Q6600 is at 3.0 Ghz on Water cooling. I think 60C is a bit hot imo, what do you think?
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited February 2009
    Whoa, way hot. Mine's 60 at 3.6GHz on air.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2009
    If he's not going to overclock, 60 is no problem at all! Yes, I've got one running 3.6GHz, full load with cores from 59-63, but I only run an expensive cooler because I enjoy overclocking and running full load ([EMAIL="Folding@Home"]Folding@Home[/EMAIL]) 24/7.

    Back when I started Q6600 *fun around a year ago I scoured the Internet for anything I could find concerning Q6600 overclocking and safe operating temperatures, for both the B3 and G0 steppings. Really, 60C is not an issue.


    *one of the all time great CPUs, IMO :D
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