Thermal pads???

[therealjoe]

i have bought a retail socket 939 amd athlon 64 3700 processor and i am wondering if they include a thermal pad i have looked and the heatsink and it looks like a thermal pad but its my first build so i dont know and i dont want to risk it is their anyone who has a amd socket 939 processor who would like to share some knowledge btw i dont have pictures

[Slug Toy]

there shouldnt be any thermal pads for a cpu heatsink. thermal pads would probably ruin the rate of heat exchange, especially if its a copper heatsink. its probably a protective pad to stop the contact surface from being scratched.

ill bet you can probably peel it off, and the surface will be nice and flat and smooth (as far as stock heatsinks go). to add to that, ill bet you have a bit of thermal paste in the package as well, and if it was really a thermal pad, the paste would be kind of pointless to have.

[therealjoe]

it doesnt include thermal paste what thermal pastes do you recomend?

[therealjoe]

i just checked its like a thin paste like thermal paste so i think it is thermal paste or a thermal pad

[Slug Toy]

hmm, those buggers may be trickier than i thought. seems to me i read somewhere that they also did what you're describing... they put thermal paste on for you and cover it. then you can just peel the cover off and slap the heatsink on.

so thats probably the easiest answer. its a patch of pre-applied thermal paste.

but if you want better stuff, go with arctic silver 5. that usually gets you an extra couple degrees lower.

[therealjoe]

lol yeah thats what i thought i was just confirming my suspicions thanks btw i think i will leave it on and use that but if it causes any problems i will remove it. it seems to conduct heat well enough

[archmaille]

I've got the exact same processor and yes, they do include a thermal pad on the heat sink for you. Since it appears that you're just using the stock aluminum heat sink anyways I suggest just leaving it alone and applying it as is, especially since it is your fist build. If you wanted a little better performance I would go with Arctic Silver 5, but remember just a small dot of it will do. You can actually install the heat sink without any kind of thermal material, but I wouldn't ever do so myself I like to get the lowest temps possible.

[therealjoe]

Yes as its my first build i dont want to void the warranty by buying a better heatsink but i might do it later on. I read an article about aplying thermal paste they say aply the same ammount as the size of a ricegrain. Thanks for giving me advice :D