Philippe Landau wrote:
Basil Chupin wrote:
Per Jessen wrote:
Also, I would have thought the heatsink supplied by AMD for the Phenom would be sufficient for 4 cores - but maybe not.
Nope. They provide the minimum required but it is really up to you to ensure that the correct heatsink is installed to suit your local conditions.
Cooling/ heatsinks/thermal pastes is a science of its own. Go to Overclockers.com (and similar) to find out all about heatsinks/temperatures, lapping the heatsink, using the right compound, and so on :-) . It's a new world! :-) .
Are you saying standard thermal paste can cause problems ?
Depends on what you mean by "standard paste". There is that white gunk which was used many moons ago when the cpus generated very little heat but now you have some pretty nifty stuff which contains silver particles (Artic something, which is what I last used) so that the heat is transferred better from the cpu to the heatsink. But there is more to it than simply the 'paste'. The basic purposed of a heatsink is to dissipate the heat generated by the cpu (for each watt there is 1 degree C of heat). To be able to be dissipate that heat as efficiently as possible there needs to be perfect contact between the cpu and the heatsink - which is why there is an art involved in lapping the bottom of the heatsink to a mirror finish and to also make sure that the surface is FLAT so as to provide complete contact with all of the (tiny) surface of the cpu. Now, it is not always possible to obtain a completely smooth, flat surface on the heatsink so a THIN, VERY thin, layer of thermal paste is applied to fill in the microscopic imperfections of the surfaces. Put on a thick layer of the paste and you defeat the purpose because too much paste only hinders the transfer of heat. Someone in an earlier posting stated that even a speck of dust may interfere with the dissipation of heat thru the heatsink - and this is correct because there won't be the optimum contact between cpu and heatsink.
Are the matching CPU heatsinks by say AMD a risk ?
Cannot comment on this but I can say that all my cpus have been/are AMD and I have replaced the heatsinks which came with them with my own (as in ones that I bought). There are at least 2 sites (one of them I already mentioned, the Overclockers) which give the efficiency of various heatsinks as well as give you instructions on how to go about lapping a heatsink's surface. To add to the 'science' of heatsinks, there are explanations about the various materials used in making heatsinks and how efficiency is affected by these materials. For example, you can get a full copper heatsink and also an aluminium one but with a copper base attached at the bottom - and such an attachment adds another dimension to the efficiency of heat transfer because the 2 surfaces (heatsink and attachment) may each need lapping and an application of a dab of paste. If you are really interested in this subject go to some site like Overclockers and read the material there; the articles explain much better than I can about what could be done to get the optimum heat transfer from cpu to heatsink. Ciao. -- If you want to know what a man is like, take a look at how he treats his inferiors not his equals. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org