The Friday 2005-04-29 at 16:08 -0600, Darryl Gregorash wrote:
That's what he just told him - apply some thermal grease between the heatsink and CPU. I see nothing wrong with this advice, in fact I would do this if it were my computer.
When someone says "grease" I think of petroleum-based lubricants, which is what grease normally is. You can also get things like molybdenum dioxide, which aren't technically greases but sometimes are called that -- whatever you call it, any grease is a lubricant, and you do not want those inside your computer case, ever.
Heatsink material is not grease. The stuff I use is an off-white substance almost like putty. When exposed to air or heat, it hardens. When applied between two surfaces, it forms a high heat-transfer bond between the two substances (fills in all the little holes), and hardens from the heat. Hardly a grease.
The thermal compound that was normally used in electronics, even before processors needed heatsinks, was called "silicon grease", and most certainly stayed as a grease even years after applying it to transistors heatsinks and such. I must have a tube of it somewhere. That's probably why modern compounds are still named "grease", even if they aren't. On the other hand, I have seen a PC working happily submerged completely in vegetable oil (sunflower seed oil, in fact - they didn't though of using transformers oil). Messy stuff. I'd hate to be the chap doing changes to the motherboard. :-p That was two years ago or roundabouts, I wonder if it is still running. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson