# Question regarding Arctic Silver 5 application



## InfernalSolo (Nov 8, 2006)

I finally decided to make the jump from the standard thermal grease to Arctic Silver 5. However, I am a bit nervous about following the directions that they have for applying it to my CPU (AMD Athlon 62 x2 5600+) 

http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appinstruct/as5/ins_as5_amd_dual_wcap.pdf

because after working with some builds with the regular stuff, I am just used to spreading the stuff around the heat spreader. I'm sure the Arctic Silver people know what they are talking about, but my gut still won't believe it. Will a tiny little dollop on the center of the heat spreader really smear across it enough to properly cool the cores? 

I have heard about another application technique for Intel dual cores where you run a line of the grease down the length of where the two cores are like it's cocaine, but I'm sure that would only work on Intel CPU's as AMD probably has different placement of the cores. Besides, I'm sure that they wouldn't write those instructions without knowing they will work, but may I please have some comforting words to make me feel better about it ray:?


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## kodi (Jun 30, 2004)

It will work.
The thermal paste is only there to fill in the microscopic ridges and valleys on the CPU and Heatsink (you won't see them with the naked eye) and allow more surface contact and therefore more cooling


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## blackduck30 (Sep 7, 2004)

The main thing to remember is too much can cause problems, the thermal grease actually acts as in insulator and you will get high temps.
The worst thing is that too little will give you high temps as well.

It is a fine line


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## InfernalSolo (Nov 8, 2006)

I just applied it today. I used ArctiClean 1 and 2 for cleaning the old grease that I had on the CPU and heatsink as per the instructions. I then applied the Arctic Silver exactly following the instructions that they had for my cpu:

I put a dot in the center with an amount of grease that is about the size of one and a half uncooked grains of rice.

I then set the heatsink straight down onto the CPU and twisted it about one degree each way to make sure there were no air bubbles.

The results were not quite what I expected. The temperature of my CPU increased by about one degree from the baseline temperatures that I had established before I applied the new grease, both for idle and under heavy load. As I did everything exactly as per Arctic Silver's instructions, I have two theories:

1. Arctic Silver mentioned a "break-in" period of around 200 hours before the grease would perform at its maximum... well... performance.

2. As it is only a difference of one degree, it could be that my cooler isn't working at its full strength, and is simply trying to maintain a temperature of no higher than 41C or so, instead of as cool as it can possibly get it. This may be the case because I have a thermal electric cooler that automatically varies both its fan speed, and turns the thermal electric unit on and off to maintain temperature.

Any other ideas?


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## Old Rich (May 31, 2007)

One degree is probably within the margin of error . . I have notices a 2-5 degree drop after the pc has been on for a couple of days


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