Just use a graphene thermal pad 😀

put a pea sized dot, put the hs on top and move it around in a circle motion then back to centre and clip the hs in, that should cover most of the surface

Just a dab of paste in the center of the CPU will do. Let the presser of the heatsink spread it.

ShovelKnight wrote:

Just use a graphene thermal pad 😀

a pad? well these CPU's don't make much heat so that might work.

ShovelKnight wrote:

Just use a graphene thermal pad 😀

I probably would if I had one at the moment, but I don't. All I have right now is some Artic Silver MX-4 that I'll probably put on it when I get home. Right now I have some el-cheapo stuff that the school has, and it probably would be good enough for something this old, but I'm not 100% sure.

treeman wrote:

put a pea sized dot, put the hs on top and move it around in a circle motion then back to centre and clip the hs in, that should cover most of the surface

Couldn't that spread it too thin? I wish these had a more K6-2 design, with an IHS and smaller CPU to heatsink contact surface area. I guess I could get a 233MMX online, but I'd rather not pay money I could use on other things for 33 more MHz. I'll try that here in a little bit and see how it goes. I'll have to see if I can grab the school's laser thermometer and get readings of the heatsink to see if it's taking heat away from the CPU, instead of using the very shindig method of just touching the heatsink to see if it gets hot.

dan86 wrote:

Just a dab of paste in the center of the CPU will do. Let the presser of the heatsink spread it. a pad? well these CPU's don't make much heat so that might work.

That's what I did earlier before I made this post, actually, but I felt like it wasn't enough. The surface area of that CPU has to be as big as it is for some reason, and I suspect that having a dot in the center, even when it spreads out, could possibly leave things like the CPU's cache out of bridged contact with the heatsink.

Speaking of thermal pads, there's some new ones out now that can even be used on 9900K's with little to no ill effect. The graphene ones in particular can cool just as good, if not sometimes better, than high-end thermal paste. My school got some of these in, but they're $10-$15 a pop and I don't think they'd just let me take one home. From personal experience, I can say that they work very well.

athlon-power wrote:

dan86 wrote:

Just a dab of paste in the center of the CPU will do. Let the presser of the heatsink spread it. a pad? well these CPU's don't make much heat so that might work.

That's what I did earlier before I made this post, actually, but I felt like it wasn't enough. The surface area of that CPU has to be as big as it is for some reason, and I suspect that having a dot in the center, even when it spreads out, could possibly leave things like the CPU's cache out of bridged contact with the heatsink.

Then use more paste so the whole CPU is covered. This is a 15ish watt CPU, unless if your overvolting or overclocking the CPU you don't really need much to cool it.

athlon-power wrote:

That's what I did earlier before I made this post, actually, but I felt like it wasn't enough. The surface area of that CPU has to be as big as it is for some reason, and I suspect that having a dot in the center, even when it spreads out, could possibly leave things like the CPU's cache out of bridged contact with the heatsink.

There is no L2 cache in Pentium MMX and the CPU die itself is less than 12x12mm in size.

ShovelKnight wrote:

athlon-power wrote:

That's what I did earlier before I made this post, actually, but I felt like it wasn't enough. The surface area of that CPU has to be as big as it is for some reason, and I suspect that having a dot in the center, even when it spreads out, could possibly leave things like the CPU's cache out of bridged contact with the heatsink.

There is no L2 cache in Pentium MMX and the CPU die itself is less than 12x12mm in size.

I was thinking of the same thing.

ShovelKnight wrote:

There is no L2 cache in Pentium MMX and the CPU die itself is less than 12x12mm in size.

The CPU does have L2 cache, a massive 512KB of it. I know that seems odd for a Pentium MMX, even I was taken aback by the presence of it, let alone the amount, but it's there, according to Intel themselves.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/p … 66-mhz-fsb.html

dan86 wrote:

Then use more paste so the whole CPU is covered. This is a 15ish watt CPU, unless if your overvolting or overclocking the CPU you don't really need much to cool it.

I did that before when I first got it, although I did a terrible job. I might have to try that again, albeit, not so lob-sided and ugly.

I'm a bit confused - ceramic Pentium MMX 200 MHz? 😲 I'm pretty sure that only the MMX with 166 MHz was ever available as ceramic. The 200 MHz one had a plastic package.

athlon-power wrote:

The CPU does have L2 cache, a massive 512KB of it.

No, it does not. No socket 7 CPU ever had L2 cache, apart from the AMD K6-2+/3. The L2 cache is on the mainboard. Are you perhaps talking about the Pentium II here?

athlon-power wrote:

Couldn't that spread it too thin?

It can't be "too thin", because that's what you want to achieve in the first place. Too much termal paste will have a negative effect, as the paste is only there to fill small gaps, not to create some kind of layer. Having said that, a ceramic package does not need termal paste anyway.

derSammler wrote:

I'm a bit confused - ceramic Pentium MMX 200 MHz? 😲 I'm pretty sure that only the MMX with 166 MHz was ever available as ceramic. The 200 MHz one had a plastic package.

No, it does not. No socket 7 CPU ever had L2 cache, apart from the AMD K6-2+/3. The L2 cache is on the mainboard. Are you perhaps talking about the Pentium II here?

You're right, what the Hell? Everybody else is saying 32k L1, 16k in code, 16k in data, while Intel doesn't mention L1 at all, only saying it has L2 of 512kb. In my defense, I was looking right at Intel's documentation. Guess I know less than I feel like I do.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium/Intel-P … 0A80503200.html

However, I know for sure that it's ceramic. It sounds like ceramic when you put it down, and CPU World mentions it's ceramic. I hope I can be right about at least one thing today.

Anyways, for the lack of L2, is the L1 on the die itself? Why did they make the thing so huge if the die was so small? I am very confused right now and overall wish I had done more of my homework even though I've studied this stuff for 4 or 5 years now.

Space for pins. It's broken out from the die by bond wires. The larger packages help spread heat as well. Small, exposed dies -- like on a S370 or SA chip -- need a sink with careful placement, good contact, and higher thermal efficiency.

My personal approach is to squirt a bit on the CPU, use a piece of paper card (like the reply-mail cards stuck in every other page of a magazine) cut to a 1cm by 3cm spudger, then level the paste to a thin film. If you have bare spots, add a little more. If you have mounds and globs, add a little less. You know you've done it about right when you remove the HSF and have a slightly translucent layer on both the CPU and the HS. But, don't overthink it -- it doesn't really need to be perfect.

derSammler wrote:

I'm a bit confused - ceramic Pentium MMX 200 MHz? 😲 I'm pretty sure that only the MMX with 166 MHz was ever available as ceramic. The 200 MHz one had a plastic package.y.

Got one too. Too lazy to pickup my camera.

http://cdn.cpu-world.com/Images/uploaded/0000 … /L_00000653.jpg

Careful with Arctic Silver and the like, they stain many surfaces. Not sure if they stain ceramic but they might. I'd use pure white silicone thermal compound. With old CPU's like before P3, you can definitely get away with just using white silicone thermal compound, which I know for fact cleans up well from ceramic.

SirNickity wrote:

My personal approach is to squirt a bit on the CPU, use a piece of paper card (like the reply-mail cards stuck in every other page of a magazine) cut to a 1cm by 3cm spudger, then level the paste to a thin film. If you have bare spots, add a little more. If you have mounds and globs, add a little less. You know you've done it about right when you remove the HSF and have a slightly translucent layer on both the CPU and the HS. But, don't overthink it -- it doesn't really need to be perfect.

^^^^ This is the best way ! Use as little as possible. A Matchbook cover works well too !
For Silver compounds like Artic Silver: DO NOT GET ANY ON THE BOARD ! LoL It is conductive and can short things out

athlon-power wrote:

You're right, what the Hell? Everybody else is saying 32k L1, 16k in code, 16k in data, while Intel doesn't mention L1 at all, o […]
Show full quote

You're right, what the Hell? Everybody else is saying 32k L1, 16k in code, 16k in data, while Intel doesn't mention L1 at all, only saying it has L2 of 512kb. In my defense, I was looking right at Intel's documentation. Guess I know less than I feel like I do.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium/Intel-P … 0A80503200.html

However, I know for sure that it's ceramic. It sounds like ceramic when you put it down, and CPU World mentions it's ceramic. I hope I can be right about at least one thing today.

Anyways, for the lack of L2, is the L1 on the die itself? Why did they make the thing so huge if the die was so small? I am very confused right now and overall wish I had done more of my homework even though I've studied this stuff for 4 or 5 years now.

Given Intel's recently-demonstrated lack of giving-a-crap about their old hardware, I'm not surprised they can't even be bothered to get the datasheet right.

r00tb33r wrote:

Careful with Arctic Silver and the like, they stain many surfaces. Not sure if they stain ceramic but they might. I'd use pure white silicone thermal compound. With old CPU's like before P3, you can definitely get away with just using white silicone thermal compound, which I know for fact cleans up well from ceramic.

Second this, BTW. I save my tube of Arctic Silver for the fancy CPUs. Any motherboard with jumpers on it will be fine with the cheap stuff.

Sorry I vanished for a bit. Thought I overreacted to me being wrong, but I guess I didn't, anyways, I wanted to take some space for a bit in case I had overreacted.

Anyways, the lack of L2 is something I feel like I should've known in the first place. Why does my motherboard have soldered on L2, if my CPU already has L2? That wouldn't make sense. At least I'll really know it now- I doubt I'll forget about the Pentium and Pentium MMX's lack of L2 cache for a while now.

I took the motherboard out of the case via the removable motherboard tray (why didn't they keep this ability in modern cases?), and got a good look at the heatsink. The thing doesn't even cover the whole CPU- the contacting surface itself is essentially a rectangle, and it leaves a good centimeter and a half to two centimeters of the top and bottom edges of the CPU completely out of contact with anything, only the sides and center of the CPU actually get contact with the heatsink.

I also hate this little thing because it puts far too low a pressure on the CPU. I'm really starting to wonder if thermal paste was even thought of at all when this system was designed. I'm really wishing I had an MMX 233, an MMX 200 with an IHS, or a higher-end K6 or K6-2, which have IHS's.

My Pentium board has a COAST module for L2 cache:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_on_a_stick