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IBM Doubles CPU Cooling With Simple Change
Ars Technica is reporting that IBM has discovered a new cooling breakthrough that, unlike several other recent announcements, should be relatively easy and cost-effective to implement. "IBM's find addresses how thermal paste is typically spread between the face of a chip and the heat spreader that sits directly over the core. Overclockers already know how crucial it is to apply thermal paste the right way: too much, and it causes heat buildup. Too little, and it causes heat buildup. It has to be "just right," which is why IBM looked to find the best way to get the gooey stuff where it needs to be and in the right amount, and to make it significantly more efficient in the process."
this isn't taught where I work, and as a result oftentimes we get the units we fixed sent right back for overheating and shutting down. Pop off the heatpipe and fan assemly on the laptop mtherboard, and whoa-nelly! The ENTIRE SURFACE OF THE PROCESSOR'S COATED with thermal paste.
Each tube of thermal paste we get contains about 4CCs worth of thermal paste - MORE than enough to handle about seven or so CPUs. Instead, the entire tube gets shot onto the proc, because the syring is labeled "Single use only" (Yea, that's what I thought.)
Roughing the surface of the core casing seems like a good idea, but I dunno, most thermal compounds are rather gritty as is and wont' fit into those uber-tiny grooves. A more liquid thermal ahesive would see to be a better idea if you're going to mar the surface of the core's protective casing, I would think.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
When will someone get a clue and power CPU fans with Stirling Engines?
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
I could be wrong, but I believe that the polishing was done back in the day when the core was exposed (back in the Athlon days) so that the heatsink would make the best contact it could with the core. The core was such a small dense area that the best contact possible was needed. Now that everyone has a spreader on their core(s) the spreader itself does most of the immediate heat relieving and the contact between the spreader and cooler is much larger. With the larger area of contact using the super polished method it is much harder to get an even 'sandwich' across the entire area of the spreader, thus the move to the rougher finish.
I just want a CPU with an integrated water block. It will require quite a bit of care to make sure that you don't gum it up, but it would solve all these heat transfer problems once and for all. Plus, if I can get water cooling everywhere, then I can eliminate all but one fan (which can be large but slow and thus quiet) and one pump, which will be immersed in the reservoir and thus quiet. I actually have a water block and a pump and just scored a tiny oil cooler to use as a reservoir, but my next system will probably be dual-dualcore so my one corny water block that I made in machining class will probably go unused. It was still a fun exercise.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
2 or 3 minutes? I work for Toshiba, and I fix laptops every day. It only takes me 5 seconds to apply thermal grease, if that. It is also compulsory for us to perform hardware stress testing if we change the motherboard, RAM, CPU or graphics card (if present). The report tells us how quickly the core heats up, to what temperature, how fast it cools once the CPU steps down to its slowest speed etc. Provided those figures are satisfactory, I don't have to reapply thermal grease.
Please don't think I'm calling you incompetent or anything, taking your time on this sort of thing is ideal, you don't want to over- or under-do it. I'm just used to re-greasing CPUs every day.
The way I was taught was (provided you're squeezing it out of a syringe or something) to make a Hershey (as in Hershey's Kiss). Put a Hershey of grease in the very centre of the core, and the flat surface of the heatsink will spread it across the entire core. It takes a while before you realise what is a good sized Hershey. Just about all of the time when I run the stress test on a good sized Hershey the report will return "optimal performance". I've been told by other laptop technicians that this technique is crap, but even after a year, the same grease will still return "optimal performance".
Mod parent up. If I look at the picture, where it says "chip-cap" and the paste is between the chip and the cap, then this is definitely a different area than between the chip cap and the heat spreader. Actually, the front page story reads "Overclockers already know how crucial it is to apply thermal paste the right way: too much, and it causes heat buildup." Of course, before that, a really good reader had already read "between the face of a chip and the heat spreader that sits directly over the core." But since this is Slashdot, most comments seem to be off the mark.