Wtf? $10 worth of Artic Silver 5?

You do realize you're NOT suppose to slather on thermal paste right? It doesn't take much at all, you only need a thin almost transparent layer, this goes for just about any type of thermal paste as well. The whole point of thermal paste is to simply cover any almost microscopic pot holes on a CPU's surface, heat therefore transfers to the heatsink ALOT better.

Did you read my post ? 😀
You do realize how large a Pentium Pro is? And that there are two of them.
As I wrote: The heat spreader is not even close to flat, we are talking about 1 mm unevenness not 1 um 😉
And 10$ was probably an exaggeration, but not by much.

Also I probably reported your post 😁
Report / reply looks too similar in high resulution.
But Im sure the moderator wont find any warez in your post.

Most of the thermal transfer will occur in that one good contact spot. Thick thermal paste is poorly conductive. I wouldn't worry about it. Convex is probably better than concave too.

Just lap it into submission 🤣 .

swaaye wrote:

Most of the thermal transfer will occur in that one good contact spot. Thick thermal paste is poorly conductive. I wouldn't worry about it. Convex is probably better than concave too.

Yes Im aware about that. When I rescue systems from dumpters I often laugh when I see how much paste the former owners used when mounting their poor CPUs

But no more lock ups or other strange behavior so poor heat transfer is better than nothing.
There is some diffrence between the tiny naked core on a Socket-A CPU and the lawn size heatspreader on the Pentium Pro.

TELVM wrote:

Just lap it into submission 🤣 .

I will not lap a Pentium Pro! I like the gold where it is.
If you look in my Slot-1 Baby-AT thread you will see a lapped Celeron 500 CPU I lapped back in 1999 😀

Is this one of the black PPros, or the gold-capped type?

My gold capped PPro is a little concave, as most CPUs are, but it's not too bad... it did take a fair bit of thermal compound to get full coverage simply due to the surface area of the thing, but it wasn't that much more than I'd normally use on, say, an Athlon64.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Is this one of the black PPros, or the gold-capped type?

My gold capped PPro is a little concave, as most CPUs are, but it's not too bad... it did take a fair bit of thermal compound to get full coverage simply due to the surface area of the thing, but it wasn't that much more than I'd normally use on, say, an Athlon64.

Its the gold-capped type.

One of the CPUs is a bit concave, not terrible uneven but more so than most CPUs.
The other CPU is convex and has a high spot that is not centered in the middle. It is the most uneven CPU heat spreader I have ever seen... by far...

The tube was almost full, now it isnt. The Athlon 64 is just in the picture so you can see the size of the tube with paste.
Im do not have a spare Pentium Pro to take a picture of but the heat spreader of the Pentium Pro is about twice the size of the Athlon 64 heat spreader.

I suggest leaving expensive AS5 behind. I just buy the 22g Ceramique syringe. It's cheap but it tends to compare well with AS5's performance.

I've also been considering another paste, MG Chemicals 860. It rated excellent in a big roundup with testing methodology that impressed me.
www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.asp ... MgodW1AA3g

http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com/index.php … 1&limitstart=12

For the past couple years I've been using this.

I see no reason to use anything fancy... the 3-4 degree difference between the cheap stuff and the high-end 'enthusiast' compounds means exactly SFA in practice. If that little of a temperature difference is enough to cause a problem, you have an inadequate heatsink to start with.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

For the past couple years I've been using this.

I see no reason to use anything fancy... the 3-4 degree difference between the cheap stuff and the high-end 'enthusiast' compounds means exactly SFA in practice. If that little of a temperature difference is enough to cause a problem, you have an inadequate heatsink to start with.

It makes a difference if you're overclocking the shit out of something like I did with my main rig, but it shouldn't be that big of a deal for pre-Pentium 4 hardware.

I used some white goop from RadioShack for years until it ran out then some grey stuff from China (cheap). Just about anything is better then an air gap, which is the only reason we use heatsink compound (to fill in airgaps). People go crazy with the stuff and screw up performance even if they have a decent heatsink and fan to begin with.

The problem with the ultra-cheap stuff is it sometimes totally separates or even dries up. That's what I remember of the Radio Shack paste that I used in the '90s! But I don't know what they sell now.

Yeah there is a ton of blind faith and total lack of perspective out there when it comes to thermal paste. I don't know how many times I've seen that IC Diamond paste pushed as the "only real choice" and the solution to all overheating problems. Sigh.

swaaye wrote:

I've also been considering another paste, MG Chemicals 860. It rated excellent in a big roundup with testing methodology that impressed me.
www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.asp ... MgodW1AA3g

http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com/index.php … 1&limitstart=12

Noooo A vs A+ and half of a degree difference. That is unacceptable... 😉

The Artic Silver was bought when I overclocked a C2D E8600 with a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme.
Later when I upgraded to an i7 920 I bought a Noctua NH-D14 and there was a large tube with paste included.
I bought a second NH-D14 when I upgraded to the dual Xeon rig I use today so I got another "free" tube with paste.
The Noctua paste lasted until recently and I only had that old and expensive tube with Artic Silver 5 left 😀

Artic silver 5 is outdated and there are better compounds in both directions. The high end compounds do make a difference vs the cheap stuff that the oems use but for retro almost anything will do.

Skyscraper wrote:

... I will not lap a Pentium Pro! I like the gold where it is ...

Ouch, I wasn't aware P-Pros are pieces of jewelery 😳 .

TELVM wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

... I will not lap a Pentium Pro! I like the gold where it is ...

Ouch, I wasn't aware P-Pros are pieces of jewelery 😳 .

Top it off each one (ceramic) has about $50 worth of Gold and are getting rare so no lap.

I say you should lap it, take the gold filings, melt them down into an ingot, and sell it. 😉

Exactly why did Intel plate P-Pro's IHS in gold? Beats me 😕 .

TELVM wrote:

Exactly why did Intel plate P-Pro's IHS in gold? Beats me 😕 .

Lots of electronics are gold plated. Gold is non-reactive (ie corrosion resistant) and very electrically conductive.