Burn

:) Still don't have enough balls to cut it...heh

ENTERPRISE

This is a great faq helped me alot

AtoMicMoNkEy15

are u supposed to tkae off the heatspreader and apply AS5, please be cleaerer.

Burn

The heatspreader is permanantly attached to the core, apply AS5 on the heatspreader.

jrabb1920

About the heat spreader, All you have to with out taking it off, is to lap the heat spreader and heat sink, plus it takes the chance of damageing the core away, I have done both, lapped or taken off is maybe 1to 2c differance.

SPHERE

On some cores yes, they apply adhesive. (like on prescott cores) But most have thermal paste. :)

Laping the heat spreader doesn't drop the temps nearly as much as removeing the heatspreader will. ;)

Lucid

quick question, since copper transfers heat way better than any other metal why do they use silver in the compound ?

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Burn

Silver has a much higher heat transfer capability than copper does.

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Manco

When I installed the Zalman 9500 I followed Arctic Silvers recommendation to only add a small dab in the center of the heat spreader, and after securing it, perform a slight rotation on the heat sink if possible (which it was). I recently removed the heat sink and the entire surfacd of the heatspreader had arctic silver on it. They suggest using approximately the amount of a small grain of rice, but I Probably used closer to a medium/large grain of rice. It stands to reason if you are smashing a grease between two very flat surfaces that the grease will natrually spread since it has no where else to go but towards the sides.

I'm not saying your approach of covering the entire surface is bad, but I find it interesting that Arctic Silver didn't recommend that approach for all installs.

For my latest water install (Thermaltake Bigwater 745) I first lapped and polished the waterblock, and then used the same method of applying AC5 (a small dab in the center in shape of a grain of rice). I The results have been good so far, but there's always that nagging question, could they have been better? I'm running 50C at load on a Presler 955@3.733GHz immediately after install (prior temps were 63C at load). They claim that the temps will decrease slightly after 7-10 days so they should go down from here.

BTW, I wasn't too impressed with Arctic Silvers documentation, as it was somewhat jumbled together, and wasn't that easy to figure out which method they wanted you to use. But your document is better organized. Thanks for taking the time to write it up.

nettwerk