Originally Posted by Digerati

If you used Arctic Silver on the die without removing the thermal pad from the heatsink, you need to pull that, clean both surfaces thoroughly, and reapply a fresh, thin, layer.

Note that even in the US, most folks use Celsius for the temperature scales. So 95°F = 35°C which is great - and nothing to worry about - in other words, don't mess with the CPU fan (other than new TIM).

If your case supports 92mm fans, that's good. Oh, and that's 92mm - millimeters - not 90 and not inches! - 120mm would be better, but you take what you get and 92mm is better than 80mm any day.

Still, I would redo your TIM so that you only have one chemical compound there.

hey Im not tryin to be a smart alec, but if I did that already and its working fine-then why bother taking it off and reapplying it? so far ive had no over heating problems with it at all, it actually runs just as cool as the athlon x2 6000+ I have in my personal system. only reason I think it runs as hot as it does is because A: its in a smaller case and B: I have 7 fans total running in my personal system (a bit overkill but better safe then sorry) and i only have 3 running in this system. so if I leave the TIM the way it is now, will it caues problems in the future? like I said I applied a miniscule amount, and the stuff on the heatsink itself was not that thick, and it seemed to make a good contact. if you think it will cause problems in the future Ill do it, I just kinda dont want to pull that off again, ive noted from experience in the past sometimes that stuff really likes to stick! thanks for your help.

oh yeah and i knew it was mm i just put in in cuz i wasnt thinkin lol that be a big fan in a computer case wouldnt it? keep it mighty cool though wouldnt it?

hey Im not tryin to be a smart alec, but if I did that already and its working fine-then why bother taking it off and reapplying it?

Good point. I suppose you don't need to but I would just to ensure there were no unwanted reactions going on between the two products.

they felt like they were the same texture and consistency, but i see your point. still not sure i want to mess with it though I was just testing it and it only goes up to 100 degrees F. under load. Im delivering it this friday and im workin 12 hour shifts till then, so if I get up enough energy and motivation to dissasemble the thing I might do it, but then again I may just leave it and see what happens, as I still have some tweaking to do (im havin fits finding the right driver for the joystick port, but thats not a biggy I just need to pull it out and find the model number off it to find the driver. im not even sure what brand it is, it was an old one i had layin around that i just threw into it at the last minute)

A lot of joy stick ports are called game ports - and many drivers are found with sound cards.

joystick port, gameport, same thing, to my knowledge any joystick that doesnt use one uses USB and those are called USB ports :P anyway, yeah i was havin problems finding the driver for the game port, but i pulled it out and it looks like it has a fry mark on it, so it probably dont work anyway. still playin with it but oh well, it was an old card i had layin around probably fried long before i got to it, I just never bothered to look at it. I might install a newer one I have that I have the drivers for. anyway, figure Ill post a few pics of the system on here Im pretty much done with it (other then the 92 mm fan and reinstalling the heatsink which i may wait to do) Oh, and yes I know the enterior is kinda crowded with all those wires, kinda annoying but its a small case and they dont seem to affect the cooling, the only thing that seems to produce any real heat is the processor and the chipset heatsink which are open, the ram runs finger cool.

You should be able to route your cables and bundle them together so they do not look like such a rat's next. That surely is affecting air flow, and does affect cooling, if only a little in your case. I also recommend replacing all flat ribbon cables with round cables of the appropriate length. They come in different colors too so you can trace them easier. Properly "dressed" wiring not only improve appearance and no deter air flow, it also makes for more thorough cleaning.

Originally Posted by Digerati

You should be able to route your cables and bundle them together so they do not look like such a rat's next. That surely is affecting air flow, and does affect cooling, if only a little in your case. I also recommend replacing all flat ribbon cables with round cables of the appropriate length. They come in different colors too so you can trace them easier. Properly "dressed" wiring not only improve appearance and no deter air flow, it also makes for more thorough cleaning.

their partially bundled up with twist ties right now, I may do a little more later on when I take the heatsink out (Im going to do that tonight to replace the TIM) but as far as the round IDE cables go, its a budget system for an 11 year old, it doesnt need to look pretty, and it runs plenty cool as is. there is constant airflow to everything but the memory-and after 3 hours of playing Call of Duty the memory was still cool to the touch surprisingly. its surprising cuz I have 2 1 gig sticks of patriot ddr2 that runs at the same speed in my system and they have heat spreaders and the heat spreaders get really hot, and these 2 512 meg sticks dont have heat spreaders and they run cool to the touch. so Im not going to worry about putting any more money in it, it should run fine for the next few years, by the time this thing hits the dirt he will be older and probably building his own better system by then. (its a bit slow by todays standards, imagine it 3 years down the road hehe) so thanks for the help!

Good luck.

I went ahead and took out the heatsink and processor and cleaned out the old TIM and replaced it with the arctic silver, and reinstalled it, seems to run at the same temperatures. I also twist tied the wires up and out of the way of all the fans to keep the air flow moving, and it seems to move around quite well even with the old fashined IDE cables. CPU idles at 90 f. chipset heatsink is a little hot but not to bad, and like I said I cant get the ram to run hot, and the PSU and hard drive seem to run cool as well. just a cool little computer. thanks for the help!