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."

Comments

AMD

[AlgUSF]

I am one of those people who assemble a PC, and don't touch it except to clean it out. I bought a retail AMD processor applied the HS/Fan that came with it, and have never had to take it off.

AMD only warranties RETAIL CPUs, OEM CPUs are usually warrantied by the retailer, usually if you buy a HS/Fan from them. So, if you buy OEM CPUs this doesn't apply to you. If you intend on using arctic silver / Zalman, then buy a OEM CPU (tcwo.com warrants them for a year with a HS/Fan purchase). If you want your warranty backed by AMD, buy a Retail procassor and use the included HS/Fan.

Re:Optimized Code

[Cid Highwind]

I have two AMD Athlon MP 2000+'s in on a Tyan Tiger MPX motherboard, and a gig of ram, in a full-tower case with four intake fans -- one on the bottom front, one on the side middle over the cards, and two in the middle back under the power supply. The exhaust fan is the PS, of course.

First problem! You need at least as many exhaust fans as you have intakes, maybe one more if you are counting the PS fan as an exhaust. Turn the two in the back of your case around, and I bet the CPU temperatures will drop 10 or 15 degrees.

When running Windows 2000 on this machine, the operating temp as reported by the BIOS runs between 50c and 60c.

When I run Gentoo Linux [gentoo.org], set up from a stage1 install and compiled specifically for the Athlon MP, the machine crashes as the temperature rises to 75c.

Are you playing UT2k3 in Windows, or using Office? Compiling code (something gentoo does *a lot* of!) taxes the CPUs and generates quite a bit of heat, writing a letter in Word doesn't. That might explain the difference in Windows and Linux operating temps. Also, make sure you have "make CPU idle calls when idle" option set in your kernel config, and check this thread in the gentoo forums about enabling halt-cooling in the chipset. It doesn't specifically mention your board, but it has links to sites that might.