Fitting new heatsinks

[Leon]

How do you do this on a P4?

Is it as easy as unclipping the old one and installing the new one?

[Wallers]

Yes, but remember to use some thermal paste. The standard P4 cooler has nice plastic levers so it easy to remove.

[Leon]

Yes, but remember to use some thermal paste. The standard P4 cooler has nice plastic levers so it easy to remove.

and put the paste where?

[Wallers]

A thin even amount over the processor heat spreader and a thin layer over the surface of the heatsink to fill in any imperfections.

[Plasterdog]

just like a paper thin layer on the cpu die bit, too much and it has a negative effect, i hate thermal paste i get all clumsy when i try do it, wouldnt worry too much though, just try cover the cpu die bit and try not get iot everywhere:P

[John Bennett]

Those plastic lever's don't half bend the motherboard :eek: . They put a LOT of force on the processor. Still, guess it's what Intel specified.

[Method0ne]

Those plastic lever's don't half bend the motherboard :eek: . They put a LOT of force on the processor.

You should try using a screwdriver on a dodgily made heatsink (usually supplied with AMD processors) if you think those things are bad.. last time I fitted this bugger the screwdriver slipped off, landing with resultant force on the board itself, luckily not causing any noticable damage, but it coulda cracked something easily.

Regarding the heatsink fitting though, I'd advise you get some cotton buds and some white spirits - it cleans all the old thermal stuff off a treat - which means that any newly applied paste will be more effective as it isnt hindered by the older stuff (this is probably more a problem on AMD systems, they use a crappy silicone based stuff - aint seen the underside of a stock pentium cooler in a long while so aint sure on those).

For example - I installed this system a few weeks back, 63 degrees @ idle with the stock crap, cleaned up and re-done with cheapo silver termal paste, now at ~53 degrees on full load, so it can make quite a difference.

[Keil-R]

A thin even amount over the processor heat spreader and a thin layer over the surface of the heatsink to fill in any imperfections.

:no:

Way too much, you'll end up with thermal paste pissing out all over the place. Just put a small blob in the middle of the thermal spreader & when you fit the cooler it will compress it to cover the surface. Using too much can actually be worse than using nothing at all.

The stock Intel coolers are pretty good btw. I've not seen anything that does a significantly better job of cooling without producing lots of noise. Zalman's are nice tho :)