I used Arctic Silver 5 on my computer's heatsink this afternoon.Okay, I know I’m a nerd. And I’m a lucky nerd.
Because I’ve taken the fan and heatsink off at least three times without putting any new thermal paste down. Took them out to the workshop in the back and used Brian’s big compressor to get all of the dust and dirt out. Each time, the thermal paste got weaker and weaker.
Here’s kind of what I’ve figured out about the whole thing.
The fan is connected to a big metal thing that looks like wings with slots. This thing pulls the heat off of that little processor thingy (that’s so very, very important to the computer, I guess it’s kind of like the brains of the whole thing) and the fan blows it out of the computer, through the side vents. If it gets too hot, it can quit working. Most computers nowadays are made to shut down if they get too hot.
Well, the thermal paste makes a bond between the processor and the heatsink. It increases the amount of heat the heatsink can pull from the processor, thereby lowering the running temp of the processor. The computer runs cooler and it’s quieter.
UPS didn’t show up until three and it took me under an hour to do what I had to do. Since it was my first time, I was really careful.
I had to clean off the old thermal paste from the heatsink and processor and it was time consuming. Q-tips and denatured alcohol and an old credit card and coffee filters (they don’t have lint).
And, like I said, the system is running a few degrees cooler tonight. And the fan doesn’t start up when I run any kind of program (so far). Last night it was driving me crazy. The instructions say that it has a 200 hour cure rate, so it should just keep getting cooler and cooler until it’s completely cured.
I love it when I do something new to the computer and it still runs!
:jesterA:
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