Applying Thermal Paste - Applying Thermal Paste
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Applying Thermal Paste
Now, lets get to the specifics of the actual application of the thermal grease itself. Here is a pic of the video card chipset after a dab-0-goop.
For optimal performance, you want to have as little grease between the heatsink and the chipset, although you do want to have enough to fill all the gaps that may be present due to imperfections in both the chipset and the HSF unit itself. Lets take a look at the next pic showing the business card doing it's intended job and spreading the goop.
First lets down a few of those beverages I mentioned earlier. It helps steady the hand. And hey, any excuse to drink is a good one, right? ;-)
I apologize if you are checking out this article on dial-up, but I wanted to give you a clear representation of the entire process, and above you see the start of getting the thermal grease evenly spread. Onward.
Ahh, now we are getting somewhere. Here you see the entire chipset covered with a nice, even spread of grease. Pretty nice huh? You'll see the finished product below.
I swear, sometimes it looks so sweet, I don't even want to hide it by putting on a heatsink. But that wouldn't help the situation, so lets throw a BLORB on this baby and see what happens.
Ok, were looking pretty good at this point. Ya gotta give props out to Thermaltake for making a beautiful HSF unit to cool the peeps' vid cards and mobo chipsets. It just doesn't get prettier than this. Also, we'd like to thank Sidewinder for providing the BLORB for us. They can be had there for $11.50 + $4.35 shipping. Not bad at all.
One last thing I want to touch on. You always want to make damn sure you have a good mating from HSF to chipset. Lets hold the card up to the light and see if anything shines through. This is a very simple test, but will definitely tell you if you have gaps.
Nope, no light there. Again, I wanted to make these pics large so you would get an accurate representation of the mating process. It actually looks like the application of goop is much thicker than it is, but only because some of it was draped over the edge of the chipset itself.
Now, I'm not going to get into, how much more I could overclock the card, or temperature differences. That is not my intent of this article. Rather I wanted to show you peeps how we like to apply thermal grease here @ the OCA laboratories. Again, I cannot reiterate how essential this is to achieve maximum cooling on your chipset or cpu. As a side note, head on over to IPrint.com and order your free 100pack of business cards. Ok, how bout one last gratuitous pic of the card? And finish off that last beer before I put the card back in my box.
That's it. We appreciate you checking us out and as always, if you have any feedback, flames or props, please head to our FORUMS for discussion.
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