need advice on fitting a heatsink

Hi,
I plan to upgrade to an Athlon XP 1800 PIB, which comes with heatsink and fan ready to install. After an overheat problem with a SIS chipset in the past I now have a question about thermal paste.
The heatsink for the PIB Athlon XP comes with that blue goo on the base which is supposed make a good joint to the CPU, but which made my chipset run too hot and crash.
Can anybody advise me whether to stick with,(no pun intended!) the AMD provided goo, or to use one of the silver based thermal pastes?
I know that AMD know what they are doing but does anyone have any experience of temperature differences using the two different pastes?

Rogleale

 

This is a personal preference of my own and I am not advocating that everyone adopt this method. Whenever I install a heat-sink, I always scrape off any tape-like or sticker-like contact point adhesive, clean the surface with denatured alcohol and then apply a silicon-based paste to the surface.

I've been using this and similar paste for twenty years or more and I trust it. The reason that manufacturers changed to these adhesive tapes is not that it is better. They changed because the paste is messy and gets all over everything if it is not carefully applied. Also, many end users didn't know how to apply it properly or, because it is messy, or for some other reason, they didn't use it at all and consequently burned up their processors.

I don't trust the tape stuff.

 

The tape stuff actually made my cpu overheat. I was really lucky it didnt burn out all together, bt it just kept locking up the machine. As soon as I scraped off the goo and used silver based paste, the problem went away. A friend of mine who knows about these things tested it all for me and said the cpu ran 15 degrees cooler afetr the silver paste had been applied.

I would recommend rubbing down the base of the cooler with very fine wet-n-dry as well, to get a good smooth finish.

 

Hi r.leale.

Althought I have never used it, some people i know highly regard Artic Silver as there thermal compound of choice. They strip the thermal pad off first thing and apply artic silver. Ive heard good things but cant find anywhere that sells it in Australia, so i cant say ive used it...

http://www.arcticsilver.com/as3.htm

 

Not sure just what a PIB is, but a thoroughbred 1800+ plus runs pretty cool while palaminos run a bit warmer. You should be OK with that stick pad if this is a Retail box with the standard AMD heatsink fan, however, nothing beats Arctic Silver in my book. Rub a half of a rice size grain of it on the heatsink itself to polish it and even less on the processor, then apply about a rice size grain to the processor and smooth it out with the edge of a credit card or something similar. Pop that puppy in the socket, install the heatsink and don't try to wiggle it around or slide it.

 

I gotta get me some Artic Silver. Found a place that sells it so goin there next week . It is quite expensive tho, so if u cant afford just buy a stock thermal pad - does the job.

 

Hi All,

Thanks for all the advice and suggestions. I have decided to strip off the AMD supplied thermal pad, and use a thermal paste.
Not Artic Silver, but a thermal paste as supplied by Rue du Commerce here in France. It worked with my SIS chipset problem, which started because ECS used a thermal pad under the heatsinkwhich must have been a really good insulator!!
I'll repost if there is anything to talk about.