heat sink problem, question

[Disvengeance]

ok , i just opened up my amd athlon 3000+. and i took out the heatsink, and theres this grey square of some type of puddy on it, i was wondering should i remove that, or leave it on, ...thanks...:confused: , ill probably be getting a better heatsink anyways, like an slk-800 or 900

[Straight_Man]

New retail CPU??? Is there peel-off tape, blueish, on it??? If so, take the loose tab and peel off just the protective tape. If no tape, you need some heat sink compound. If someone is thinking about saying that with a thermal patch you do not use same, I DO and temps run about 3 C lower than without even even with CPU unloaded.

If you took heatsink off of CPU in case, most of the proper heatsink compund is grayish these days, or whitish beige color. That should stay unless it is uneven and got wiped uneven while heatsink was being taken off. If that is the case, it gets verycarefully cleaned off and replaced with a tiny bit of heatsink compund-- something like Arctic Silver Ceramique would work, but only on the raised central CORE and not elsewhere on the chip.

[Disvengeance]

yeah sorry for not mentioning this before, its a brand new retail cpu, and i took the plastic cover off the bottum of the heatsink, and theres this greyish patch of stuff, thats what im wondering about

[Al_Capown]

Well are you going to apply thermal paste afterwards?

[Straight_Man]

Ok, with tape off, if it is semi-shiny silvery gray, that is meant to stay there-- it came on my retail heatsink also, and it is silver-bearing solder smoothed to a nice sheen. Definitely heat sink compund time. Or no overclocking until you do, the Ceramique heatsink compound is good for a 5-10 C drop with that pad there, depending on what you are doing with CPU-- work load, OCing or not, that kind of thing.

[Black Hawk]

AFAIK, on retail procs the HSF comes with some thermal stuff. Just install it like any other HSF and don't worry about it till you get a new HSF. If you want to use some artic silver then clean it with alcohol and apply a thin amount of thermal paste.

[Disvengeance]

ill be ocing this once i get a better heatsink and fan
thanks for ur help guys:)

[Straight_Man]

The newer retail Bartons have a thin silver solder layer on the underside of the aluminum heatsink. Even sticking a tib of AS II on the core and smoothing it out lowered the temp some. Cleaning off the AS II and sticking on a bit of Ceramique really lowered temps a decent amount.

The solder has micro-gaps.

The older CPUs came with a thermal tape pad (pinkish or pure white) which I usually took off VERY CAREFULLY and replaced with paste. Cooler with paste, I experimented both ways.

[WuGgaRoO]

keep that crap on until u get a better hjeatsink and fan..and make sure when u buy that better heatsink that u also purchase artic silver creamique...its good and non conductive...so if ui get sloppy...its noooo biggy