Too much thermal paste on the CPU?

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited November 2004 in Hardware
A couple days ago I installed a new copper heat sink on my AMD Barton 2500+ Athlon XP. I used what I felt was a 'little' of the EC350-TU15 Evercool thermal paste that came with the heat sink.

Temperatures at 100% processor folding load were now 47 C. Down from 51 C with the aluminum heat sink at half the load.

After a day, the processor temperatures settled to 44 C at the same 100% load.

Did the excess thermal paste get squeezed out of the way from the mounting spring pressure and vibration from the fans and drives? I don't know how else it could have lost 3 degrees.

Comments

  • comfortablecomfortable Sugarland, TX
    edited November 2004
    Isn't there some sort of thermal-paste burn-in theory?
  • RiddickRiddick Malaysia Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    nah.. it takes some time for the thermal paste to acheive optimal heat dissipating levels.. commonly known as a burn in period for the thermal paste if im not wrong..
  • madmatmadmat
    edited November 2004
    Essentially yes, the excess paste does squeeze it's way out but unless you could lay a layer of paste on the CPU die that was perfectly flat and less than the thickness of a piece of paper you'll never be able to put a layer on as thinly as it's needed to be and not have any get forced out.
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