Cooling Compound

[Twiggz]

I,ve just bought a AMD Athlon XP 2500 and a recommended fan and heatsink.

The heatsink came with a thermal pad. Should I rather remove the thermal pad and use thermal compound. Or is the thermal pad just as good?

 

[KimLeece]

Personally I think that you would do better with thermal compound such as artic silver. How to use it can be found here:

http://www.arcticsilver.com/instructions.htm

Kim.

'Everybody is ignorant - only on different subjects.'
Will Rogers.

 

[paparazi]

The pad will work fine but good quality paste will work even better, expect a 2-3 degree C drop using ASIII over the original pad.
Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[junior35]

From a friend of mine who sells computer parts ,Arctic Silver is a great conductor,but BEWARE ,according to him he's seen shorted out CPU's because of this compound's high metal content.AMD specifically voids warranties due to this(read the fine print)
Instead ask about ceramic compound equivalents and save yourself the headache!