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AMD: No Grease For You!
bahamat writes "In a surprising turn of events, this article over at Xtreme Tek explains that the official stance from AMD is that you will void your warranty if you use any thermal grease or if you're not using the heatsink provided with your CPU. Sucks to be you if you buy a defective AMD CPU and put a Zalman on it for the first boot." AMD, the article says, doesn't want you to use anything "other than Shin Estu G 749."
State Law mandates a 1 year parts and manufacturing warranty irregardless of OEM status or not. Say what you will about Calif. but we do look after the consumer, except for the power consumer that is...
"Sucks to be you if you buy a defective AMD CPU and put a Zalman on it for the first boot"
AMD Athlon XP(TM) Processor Thermal Solutions
When selecting a thermal solution for your system, please refer to the following listing of heatsinks evaluated and recommended by AMD for use with AMD Athlon XP(TM) processors. Note, the following heatsinks are recommended for maintaining the specified Maximum die temperature requirement. In addition, this selection is not intended to be a comprehensive listing of all heatsinks that support AMD processors.
From the article:
"using a heatsink other than the stock heatsink on a retail chip also voids the warranty."
So if you pay the $10-15 extra for the retail instead of OEM, they expect you to use the hs/fan that comes with it.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Let me explain the problem with a simple example. And this has nothing to do with those who want to overclock their CPU or otherwise soup up their system.
The fan on the "stock heatsink" they talk about is less than quiet, but more importantly is poor enough that in many cases it will not even last the life of the warranty on the CPU. And the phase change material is "one use", you can't remove the heat sink and reapply it again with the same strip of heat sink material and have it function properly. When my heat sink fan died some months after I started using it (as detected by the BIOS seeing it slowing down considerably and a reelated increase in CPU temperature), I went to the local CompUSA and got a replacement copper fan. The "stock heatsink" just isn't always available. The replacement heatsink does a far better job, but I had to use a non-conductive thermal grease to install it. By this proclimation, I would have voided my warranty in two ways, using thermal grease and a better but non-standard heat sink.
I much prefer AMD over Intel, but if AMD is going to do this they need to consider some real world situations. As far as I know they don't warranty the heatsink fan, and even if they were to start it would not be reasonable for them to expect a user to not use their computer for the time it takes to ship back a bad fan and get a replacement. If they were supplying a fan and heatsink that would never need replacement, they might be on a more moral high ground, but having a stock fan that dies easily and then claiming you void the warranty if you correctly replace the heat sink isn't user friendly. And, of course, there are some people wo have a problem with the noise the stock fan makes, and while the argument is not as strong as the one I just made, I think they should be able to replace the stock haetsink and fan with a quieter one if they want, as long as they follow good technical procedures. I certainly don't have a problem with AMD stating they will not be responsiable for problems caused by conductive thermal grease, but this policy does seem to go too far, particularly given the fan they supply on that heatsink.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Rubbing alcohol! They'll never know.
No, try again. Ever tried getting Arctic Silver (or el-cheapo white thermal paste) off a CPU with isopropanol and a Q-Tip? You won't get all of it off.
So what is the secret sauce you need to soak that Q-Tip in, you ask? Acetone. Gone without a trace every time!
If the CPU was so covered in grease, it's no wonder it ran hot. Thermal grease is meant to be used very sparingly. You want a very thin layer, just enough to fill the microscopic crevices on the CPU and heatsink mating surfaces (if the surface of the heatsink has larger-than-microscopic grooves, it's time to get out the sand paper and lap the base to a shiny finish). As good of a thermal conductor as thermal grease may be, it's terrible in comparison to a direct metal-on-metal connection. If you see a lot of grease squeeze out when you apply the heatsink, you've got too much. What you want to do is apply a thin bead of grease to one end of the CPU die, and spread it thinly across using a credit card or other device (driver's license, heavy piece of paper, etc).
If your thermal grease is applied correctly, it will come off of the CPU with little problem. A cotton swab and a dab of rubbing alcohol should be more than enough. If you have to scrub, you had too much grease to begin with.
I should know I've installed several dozen and got pissed at using various custom substances so a qtip dipped in wd40 along with a soft tissue dipped in likewise and one piece of toilet paper (to wipe off that nasty ass gasoline smell it leaves behind and the greasy looking stains you'd otherwise have left on it).
:)
And voila, looked like new, took a new coat of thermal paste/grease and... ran like new, all my servers still running after 2.0 years
That's my 2 cents.
JOKE: And to boot I bet it will never squeak either. Plus WD40 cuts through roughly any household thermal grease, including the vaunted Arctic Silver II stuff. The silicone paste comes off with water if anyone's worried. A moist towelette type thing will work just fine including the Staples/Radioshack anti static wipes. Hope that helps.
-Daedalus
PS - Arctic Silver 2 is good stuff, but not really much more effective than say... radioshack 1.99 tubes of thermal goo... the only rule is that you should use SOME form of evening compound to fill in gaps and uneven surface finish between cpu and heatsink... any paste will usually do, even thermal pads are better than nothing, unless that ONE degree difference from Arctic Silver II REALLY means much to you... in general all the silver compounds do is react to temperature changes more quickly... but unless you're running a superspiking cpu, you won't have an issue, and I have never had a cpu that spiked so fast and so hard that the thermal paste made a difference. Oh and to add, I've never had a CPU fail. It is all about cooling and how often you turn them on and off. Much like diesel motors...
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
leaving this gummy mess that won't come off with isopropyl
Isopropanol doesn't cut through grease or goo really because it is not a petroleum product. Alcohols are products of fermentation of organic material. For some reason it has become the defacto cleaner in the computer world but is really not that effective on things other than inkjet printers, and disk drives. (Sometimes keyboards). Naphtha does wonders and completely evaporates unlike WD-40 which leaves its own residue.