Processor covered in gunk

Hi,

I bough a new CPU cooler and was about to change it just now. I opened up my case and got my old heatsink out and on the bottom was grey stuff and it was also on top of my processor. Is this normal?

When I put the original heatsink in, it said thermal paste wasn't required because of some contact thing it had. Could this be caused by lack of thermal paste? Also my new one has some special material on the bottom and the instructions don't mention thermal paste so could it be alright to not use it (I haven't got any and wouldn't know where to find any)?

Here are some images of the processor and heatsink and their new addition.

Heatsink
Processor

Thanks for any help you can give
Matthew

Your images don't work. The grey stuff is probably the old thermal material that eventually comes off the heat sink, I've seen lots of crap like that before. You don't really need thermal paste if the heatsink has a special thing but purists will say "scrape off the material and apply proper paste" etc.

Thanks for your quick reply!

Is there a right way to scrape it off? I don't want to put a hole through it or something (I've noticed I'm becoming a computer hypochondriac :D)



Do you mean the links to the images or how I had them before (as actual images)?

yeah... and be verrrry carefull when you remove it... it is really easy to damage to cpu if you pull if square off...

slide it smoothly and slowly off...

--Mike

Wow. I've never seen a pad the size of the entire CPU before. They're normally just big enough to cover the core. Good luck cleaning that crap off! :P

Scrape it gently off with a platic card (i.e. creditcard) and clean it with an agent like Isopropanol and a non-static rag.

Apply GOOD cooling paste (i.e. Arctic Silver 5), smear it out with the plastic card and make sure you've got a nice THIN layer that covers your CPU chip. Install new heatsink.

A good cooling paste makes a real difference compared to silicone paste and similar stuff they ship with the heatsinks. (Around 3-5 degrees celsius colder)

EDIT: Oh, and the whole point of thermal paste is to make sure that every square inch of the processor surface is in contact with the heatsink. Micro fissures and small dents reduce efficiency by many degrees.

Hmm, I managed to get a bit of with some tissue paper and then I nstalled the heatsink. I did it before I saw the last two posts. I'll try it out now and finish off the cleaning and thermal paste application later, I still have some new fans to install.

new amd chips have built in heatsinks so the paste covers the whole cpu now. just dont put it on too thick.