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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."
Rubbing alcohol! They'll never know.
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
AMD doesn't want to be responsible for people using too weak of heatsink/fans or too much thermal grease. What is the problem here?
Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
--Ronald Reagan
You do something that could potentially damage the processor (read the article), the company is perfectly well within its legal and moral rights to void the warranty. The warranty is not insurance against malice or stupidity.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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...
So what does that say? Either too many people are either applying the grease too thickly, or people are using heatsinks and OCin' their processors too much.
Basicly what it sounds like is, people are cooking their CPU's from either/or...and AMD is tired of floating the loss because of idiots.
Om, nomnomnom...
If you're an idiot and break your processor while overclocking on it, why should AMD pay?
Why should us other AMD customers pay for that matter?
I'm astonished that there's any kind of warranty for broken/melted cores at all.How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Well printer companies already do this with their "official inks" and every other company does this so that you use more of their stuff.
Is it good business? Maybe. See below:
Is is going to make customers like you? Hell NO!
Why slashdot? Why not?
"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...
Boycott AMD! Oh, wait, I'm already boycotting Intel for making high priced chips with high speeds that have poor performance.....CRAP!
The Shuttle SN41G2 requires a user to not use the AMD heatsink, as the box comes with a custom heatpipe to get the heat from the CPU away from the chip, and the insides of the system. Using the AMD heatsink could lead to the system building up too much heat internally, and causing the box to shut down or crash. I'm sure AMD processors are also used in similar custom machines.
Why is it the consumers fault AMD never integrated thermal protection or a heat spreader into their processors to protect them? Personally, I'm glad I have a P4 in my gaming box that won't fry its self if a fan dies.
When I received my AthlonXP 2400+ retail box, the heatsink was missing the covering for the adhesive pad. I had two options: Return it and pay a shitload of shipping and wait a week or two, or get thermal grease. I went with the thermal grease. I think I'll go back to Intel when I have to upgrade again.
Someone should force AMD execs to sleep in a room with a stock fan/heatsink and see how they like it. I get terrible nightmares if I actually manage to fall asleep from the loud roar.
Those who bothered to read the article would have found this little gem of a quote from Arctic Silver at the end:
Yeah, and anyone who takes their under-warranty low power, fuel efficient car and replaces the radiator with an unapproved aftermarket part, and replaces the coolant with something that doesn't meet manufacturer requirements, probably won't get warranty service, either!
Sorry to interrupt you tirade, but has it occurred to you that overclocking probably also voids the warranty regardless of what heatsink you're using? Just a thought, you know...
Didn't any of you notice that they only specifically said that Arctic Silver will void your warranty? The reason for this is that Arctic Silver is a Thermal EPOXY... While the text of the article also points out that they don't like the "conductive properties" of (obviously) the minute ammount of silver in it, they also on their "green-list" had a thermal greese that does have minute ammounts of silver. I do not think they are trying to dictate what you use, beyond trying to keep idiots from costing them needlesly large ammounts of money. Face it, just about everyone in the world thinks they know enough to set up a computer, but when they do it, they will completely forget the HS/FAN or use too much thermal greese to the point where it's minute conductive properties cause shorts... It is the idiots they are after, not us... give them a break!
Erutangis ym si siht.
They can't *prevent* you from doing it.....
Any warrantee beyond the implied one usually required by law (fitness for a particular purpose, etc) is OPTIONAL, and they don't have to offer one at all; and if they DO, it can be under whatever terms they like.
So... if you take it home and it's busted out of the box, yeah, they have to do something about it.. because that's the law.
IF it breaks in six months, but had a 12 month guarantee on it saying you had to use the original cooler.. and you used another one, why should they honor it?
I have my folks here visiting right now from out of state. I decided to peek in and see what's cooking on Slashdot nonetheless.
Now, if I were to go in the other room and tell my folks that people were ranting and raving on a website about no being allowed to use the heat sink grease of their choice on a computer processor..... Well, regular down to earth real people just wouldn't understand.
The ultimate cooler review site: http://www.dansdata.com/coolercomp.htm
:-)
Just a good one to bookmark
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
WHAT? Are you suggesting that pushing your hardware to dangerous limits it wasn't intended to operate at is NOT condoned by companies? Furthermore, are you even suggesting that after my overclocked system dies, AMD won't happily shell over a new proc? LUDICROUS! How dare you spread such lies!
(ps: the above was an attempt at humor)
YOU SUCK BALLS!
I don't see a problem with this. AMD will only guarantee its equipment with parts they provide. Use your own parts, and you're responsible for damage. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
I've installed my last three heatsinks, including my current Zalman CNPS6000AlCu, with pink TIM wax pads. TIM pads are cheap, neat, and don't require you to get crap all over your hands during application. I'll never go back to the goop game.
Since it doesn't make a difference what the hell you use to stick your heatsink onto your CPU--hell, toothpaste works just as well as AS-3--I'll stick with the easy stuff.
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.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
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.
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.
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, set up from a stage1 install and compiled specifically for the Athlon MP, the machine crashes as the temperature rises to 75c.
I'm using the retail processors that came with the fan. It's plain that they're installed correctly, but the thermal pad on the bottom (even with the adhesive backing removed properly) isn't capable of dissapating the heat.
Does this mean I'm prohibited by warranty terms from running optimized code? AMD really needs to answer this question. If they want to they could easily come up with a recommended list of approved grease, or contract with someone to sell "official grease" for situations like mine.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
What if you're just trying to be responsible, and applied thermal compound to your cpu as per standard industry practice? Should you be responsible for a faulty CPU when you took every reasonable effort to protect it from overheating?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I recently bought an Intel retail boxed P4 and they strongly urged you not to use thermal grease. They said instead to use the thermal tape that came on their heatsink, and I did. Their reasoning is that the grease dries and it makes it impossible to remove the heatsink from the chip and you'll damage the chip.
scott
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.
Exactly where did AMD say it would void the warrantee? All AMD said, according to the article, is that they recommend a particular type of thermal grease. They didn't even MENTION the word "warantee"!
The author is jumping to conclusions prematurely.
Jason
No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil
What's the big deal? Just take the heatsink off. I did, and there haven't been any pr%L:``
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
1) using grease means you are DIY with 3rd party stuff, which means it's easier for you (or the 3rd party suff you have) to screw up and
2) using grease *improves* thermal contact, making it easier to overclock, which of course voids your warranty anyway.
Now compare the XP's "no grease" tag like to this from the AMD Athlon(TM) 64 Processor Thermal Design Guide (from page 22, secion 2.6.6):
For those that don't know, the gum-paste stuff that comes on all XP heatsinks is "phase-change material." Seems the 64 is the *exact* opposite of the XP.
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
It DOES work- and well. But I've found that "Goof Off" and "Goo Gone" do an equally adequate job and don't have anywhere near the flash point acetone does...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
This is a very inexpensive, easy to implement overclocking deterrent.
/., I can understand why they'd do this. There's no way for them to tell if you weren't using a HSF on their approved list.
Think about it. If it's a poor heat sink and fan that AMD requires you to use, then overclocking is out of the question because there's no way the HSF could regulate the temperature.
See, overclocking voids the warantee, but there's no way for AMD to tell if you were overclocking. This way they do know (or it's easier for them to tell) - assuming you used a different HSF while overclocking. I wonder what they'll do when hot cpus start failing in poorly ventilated cases, or in hot climates.
Personally I don't like it, because a crappy HSF... just sucks. I don't overclock, but I still want a half decent HSF. You could probably get away with using a different fan though. Watch, soon you'll see "heat sink extensions" that you lock on to AMD's required sink, and it extends the surface area of that heatsink.
Though given some of the crazy cooling solutions that have been posted on
-kidlinux.
Damn straight! I wish I could mod you up ! I was working at this electronics company, and there were these linear voltage regulators running REAL hot (10W in a T0-220, no joke), and the tech smothered them in grease, I mean thick gops everywhere, PLUS those rubber spacers. So the case gets barely warm and he thinks he's the thermal champ.
Of course, when I saw that shit I blew a fuse, (it was my design after all), but I couldn't make the guy grasp that the case has to be HOT for the heat to sink away!
The cheap stuff (including the stuff AMD's reccomending) contains oils that tend to dry out in a year or two, leaving this gummy mess that won't come off with isopropyl. (This is the main reason for my using Arctic Silver- it doesn't dry out like Shin Etsu, etc.) For that, you've got to use something like acetone, WD-40, Goof-Off, or Goo-Gone- even if you've applied it correctly.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Why exactly would I be voiding my warrenty by switching to something better?
There is someone who apparently works at AMD over at the Bit-Tech forums who has been giving out unofficial information that seems to have quite a bit of merit to it. So make sure to check out what he is saying as he knows quite a bit about what he is talking about: Bit-Tech Forums (Remember, what he says isn't official, though)
I am suprised that no one has mentioned "The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act" which could be taken to forbid this kind of warrenty restriction.
It is the same law which forbids printer manufacturers from voiding a warrenty when you use a third party printer cartridge.
I suspect that AMD could forbid all thermal greases but limiting it to a specific brand probably would be illegal.
btw, do NOT use acetone to clean your credit card after using it to spread the thermal paste... as I said before, acetone cuts through almost anything, including the surface of credit cards. At least mine still has a magnetic stripe.
Oh really. If you were AMD and you were trying to compete against Intel, what the heck would you do? You don't have time to worry about that stuff right now, and besides, who the heck cares. Ever since I have been using AMD (2 years ago) with my Duron 650 Spitefire (codename) I have never had a problem with overheating. Now I run an original Socket A Athlon (thunderbird) 1400, Not a problem. Yes, AMD should build heatsinks into their processors, however they currently don't and you can do anything about it. And by the way, after reading half of the replies, I get sick of hearing about how loud the stock fan, SO WHAT, just replace it. The chances of your processor overheating (if you install it right and DON'T OVERCLOCK) are so low, it's not even funny. And oh yeah, for those of you who say that the core crushes in really easily, sure it does, if you take a sledgehammer to it ;)
I fail to see your point. If a company provides a warrenty on one of thier products, they are well within thier rights to provide "groundrules" for the use and application of thier product.
Lets say I amble over to the local Toyota deal and buy myself a shiny new Tacoma pickup. I want to supercharge it. Toyota states that the only supercharger which may be used without voiding the warrenty is the TRD approved unit. I put on an ACME one I got off eBay. Should Toyota honor thier warrenty when the engine goes !!BOOM!!.
It's a pretty low risk material. Alot less toxic than motor oils, paint or glue. Don't rub yours eyes, lick your fingers, or eat the stuff and wash your hands promptly and you'll be fine.
Here is a hazardous material datasheet for a typical thermal compound.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
...AMD planted this story to use /. brainpower to think of ways to prevent violations :)
Next Intel will be posting about clock locking.
Oh hell, I need to triple check my spelling from now on. Teh? I sound like a fucking Counterstrike player. *SHUDDER*
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
What you want to do is go to a law library and look up Vandermark v. Ford Motor Co. 61 Cal.2d 256 (1963).
Vandermark bought a new Ford in Los Angeles. Six weeks later, with 1500 miles on the odometer, the brakes failed, causing the car to wreck, seriously injuring the driver and passenger.
The Ford Dealership acknowledged that the crash was caused by defective brakes, but pointed to the warranty that read, "Dealer's obligation under this warranty is limited to replacement ... of such parts ... acknowledged by Dealer to be defective." In other words, neither the dealer nor Ford would assume responsibility for the damage to the car or the injuries to its occupants caused by the defective brakes.
One could argue that if Vandermark wanted a car with a warranty that would cover defective manufacture more comprehensibvely, he should have bought a car from a dealer that offered a better warranty, but no dealers offered warranties with significantly greater coverage. In 1964, the court ruled that the Ford dealership was strictly liable for product defects irrespective of what the warranty might say because
. This followed the train of thought set in motion by Benjamin Cardozo, who wrote in 1916 in MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co. 138 NYS 224 (1912):You may argue that it is a long way from automobiles whose manufacturing defects put consumers and bystanders in danger of life and limb to a defective cooling fan on a CPU, and you would be right. But if you complain in general that the state has no business interfering with product warranties, a century of case law disagrees with you.
In closing, I will point to one of the most egregious cases in this regard. In 1937, the Massengill Company put on the market an antibiotic elixer for children composed of the drug sulfanilamide dissolved in diethylene glycol and flavoured with raspberry extract. Massengill never tested the product for safety. Diethylene glycol being a very nasty poison, 107, mostly children, died shortly thereafter from liver failure caused by this medicine. Massengill could not be sued under the laws at the time because, as the President of the company said,
The nation's response to this was to pass the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which established the FDA and granted it sweeping powers to regulate the market to ensure that all food, drugs, and cosmetics were safe. Many conservative jurists, such as Richard Posner (one of Ronald Reagan's first appointments to the federal bench) promoted this expansion of tort law, noting that there is an imperfect market for information and that when information asymmetries are present, a free market does not optimally allocate resources (this observation won a Nobel prize in economics for Ackerlof, Stiglitz, and Spence). The thinking of the economics-and-law crowd was that expansion of strict liability would produce a corrective force for disclosure of information that would enhance the efficiency of markets.If the ACME supercharger at a minimum meets the same engineering specs as the TRD approved unit. Then Toyota may very well be legally obliged to honour their warranty regardless of their written warranty limitation.
Consumer protection laws allow the stipulation of specifications, not brands, models or arbitary approval processes.
As always it depends on your local laws. The manufacturer must put up, or leave.
THis is a shameless plug, but still on topic: I have 23 AMD heatsinks + fans for sale, without the processors. Anyone interested contact me...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Yeah, you learn something new everyday. I've been in electronics for ages and never heard of it before too.
After doing a little research, it refers to the migration or "pump out" of the grease due to the pressure of the heatsink on the chip and the thermal cycles of turning your cpu off/on. Because the cpu and heatsink are usually different materials they will expand/contract at different rates, and thus will "push out" the grease.
Then this might create a space between the cpu and heatsink with the "pumped out" grease acting as a standoff, essentially leaving your cpu without meaningful contact with a heatsink. With AMD cpus that normally run very hot, this is deadly and your cpu will melt.
Thermal Insulating Materials, or TIMs have a much higher viscosity than grease, so that won't happen with them. Though arguably they don't do as well as grease (in the short term) in the thermal transfer of heat.
On the surface this seems like a conspiracy by those who make TIMs, but one user observed "pump out" for himself - using Artic Silver too.
If the AMD cpus had a heat spreader on them like many intel cpus do, "pump out" may not be so bad. Though it probably would happen to some degree, it probably would not be fatal.
Given the vast quantity of cpus that AMD (and intel for that matter) crank out, they probably see a steady stream of cpus burned out with grease on them been returned to them. So naturally they want to cut there losses and want people to stick with TIMs to prevent burn out.
It also could be argued that the socket A design is inherently flawed. Thermal grease as commonly known was not designed to operate under the high pressures that heatsink clamps put on cpus these days.
I have always dissed TIMs, but now I'll give it a second thought.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I bought a couple before, they worked fine. After of course some heatsink tweaking to stop it crashing all the time. Then I found this statement somewhere:
"Be very careful if you want to install AMD CPU's yourself, because the AMD warranty policy became very severe. Guidelines from AMD: '' NO warranty on mechanical damage of the CPU like bent or broken pins, cracked dies or packages. NO warranty on manipulated CPU's by e.g. overclocking. No warranty on overheating e.g. caused by use of non-recommended (www1.amd.com/athlon/config) or improperly mounted coolers (www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/pdf/23986.pdf). or by overclocking or use of core voltage different from the datasheet. You can recognize overheating by e.g. brown spots on bottom side of the CPU, different colors on the chip surface, destroyed support pads, head conducting pastes spread all over the package. Especially no warranty for findings like: open/short at Vcc- or I/O pins, Micro Cracks (invisible cracks), when part is fully functional. ''"
Why is their warranty very severe? And why are they backing off thermal grease and non approved heatsinks? Because they have a severe overheating problem, and their design is certainly not rugged enough to bear any type of slip or mistake. With some investigation I realise that most of my friends with AMDs have overheating problems, one running 10 fans in the case to get it 55 degrees.
You get what you pay for, and AMD is cheap. Their stock heatsinks are crap, and some of the design decisions they've taken are flawed. Ho hum.
Its sad, but next one for me is a intel. At least it might still be running on a sunny day, rather than setting fire to the house...
"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."
What I don't fully understand is the gripe about those who buy in the retail box who have fans that are inadquate and need replacement? Doesn't it say "heatsink" not fan? Now I don't know about anyone else in here, but can't you just replace the fan with a series of 4 screws?
While yes, they make BETTER syncs, users who's fan has failed on the stock heat sync, who have no complaints about the present heat sync, provided their replacement fan is within the same size, speed, and airflow specifications don't have anything to worry about (in theory).
Personaly, I find it "much" easier removing 4 sheetmetal screws then dealing with the cpu clip anyday!
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
It's too bad that AMD has taken this stance with their warranties. Comparatively speaking, there can't be that many people who go nuts with the thermal grease and heat sinks, and even less so the number of people who actually mess up their CPUs.
For customer relations' sake, it seems that their move was imprudent. Had they just decided to quietly replace a few CPUs and not make a fuss, they would have looked better as a "corporate citizen."
They may be saving a few dollars down the road but the bad will that their move generated may have repercussions later. Slashdotters, are you mad enough to actually switch to another vendor?
Just be careful picking it out, because some of them *don't* use acetone now.
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).
I used my AMD warranty registration card before I sent it in.
spread it thinly across using a credit card
Spreading the grease is a bad idea. It puts ridges and valleys in the grease. When the parts are mated, the trapped air pockets create voids. Not a good idea. Always put a small dab in the center of the die and set the heatsink on it. Apply pressure and lock into place. The blob flattens out forcing all air out ahead of the grease. This prevents hotspots that lead to die failure. Don't remove the heatsink to inspect it. If you ever remove the heatsink, completely clean it and start over. You don't want air pockets in the grease.
The truth shall set you free!
Toyota may be legally obligated to prove that the aftermarket -charger broke the engine, but that is their only legal obligation. For example... If you install that supercharger, and a warranty covered part of the air conditioning system goes, they will have to fix it, ditto for anything that cannot be proved was affected by an aftermarket/out of spec part.
Personal example:
Lost my fuel cap. Replaced with an aftermarket... the aftermarket didn't seal the system to spec. My warranty is still good, however, I had to pay out of pocket for the computer to be reset.
Lost the cap again... yes I lose rather a few.
This time I got one from the dealer... same defect, but this time, full warranty coverage...
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Solvents are generally categorized into polar and non-polar solvents (water being a good example of the former, and benzene a good example of the latter).
It all has to do with the kind of substances you are trying to mix, or put into solution (polar, ionic, covalently-bonded, etc), and your solvent of choice... oil and water do not mix because water is unable to adequately penetrate and dissolve the long, largely non-polar hydrocarbon chains that make up most oils (the oil is more attracted to itself than it is to the water). you are correct that oil and water don't mix, and polarity is the reason. The best you could hope for would be some kind of suspension.
Emulsifiers can create the appearance of solubility... but that's another lecture.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
There have been cases where software bugs in medical equipment killed people. In those cases, there would be strong precedent for product liability lawsuits.
Suppliers to the military are harder to sue, which is probably good news to the folks whose bugs killed soldiers when their mortar targeting software made incorrect assumptions about target altitude or when a Patriot missile targeting system's clock overflowed after 8 hours.
For further reading on software liability issues, see this Business Week article, which was discussed on /. and badsoftware.com, which surveys software liability issues from a consumer's perspective.
... is going to point out the obvious pun?
Anyways, we decided to return the cpu, covered in grease, back to the local fry's
So you got a greasy chip in your fries?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!