Computer "Upgrading"

[Mitternacht]

I heard Gold is very good at dissipating heat. Crazy question, but if you had some gold leaf or something between the processor and heatsink, do you guys think it would work just as good as thermal paste?

[xRyokenx]

Look up the Cp (specific heat) of gold and of a couple brands of thermal paste, that would tell you, whichever has the higher specific heat should work better... but I may be wrong, I'll have to ask my physics teacher when we go back to school after Winter Break (aka Christmas Vacation).

Edit: Or you could just look up the heat conductivity on Wikipedia... so, specific heat may have nothing to do with it...

Edit: Due to the conductivity of gold, it's probably not a good idea.

[Mitternacht]

I'm just curious at the thought of it, because gold is a solid and thermal paste is like a plasma.

[xRyokenx]

Would AS5 work better than my current paste? If so, would it be smart to reinstall my current hs with AS5, or just buy a water cooler and apply the AS5?

When I get the video card and replacement hs for it, after applying AS5 to the CPU, would there be enough left for the vid card too?

Edit (yeah, I know there are a lot of these): I just did my "research" on Newegg, and they say there's plenty for a whole load of CPUs, etc. I really need to start looking crap up before asking stupid questions.

[AJ@PR]

I'm just curious at the thought of it, because gold is a solid and thermal paste is like a plasma.

Friendly corrections (or just, nit-picks on my part):

1- "plasma", I consider the 4th state of matter... highly energetic, definitely not something we want inside our PCs. Did you mean "paste"?

2- Gold is solid,... yes... but, if I were going to produce it commercially, I would make gold shavings and mix it in with a 'paste'.

3- I wouldn't use gold leaf paper because, I don't think it's that 'pure'... in addition, I don't think a flat piece of paper (even the super-duper-extra thin gold leaf) will have a perfect contact area both on top and on the bottom. IMHO, it's going to create hot-spots.

Finally, we're really not that too concerned with the 'heat capacity' of gold or other materials... we're more concerned with the ability of those materials to transfer heat.

Water has absurd ""amounts"" of heat capacity... but it isn't a really good conductor of heat.

Just my 0.02...
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[xRyokenx]

Yeah, I realized that specific heat doesn't really matter after about five minutes of reading... but yeah, thanks for the corrections, I'd rather someone tell me what I'm doing wrong than everyone stand on the sideline and think "what an idiot." But yeah... I thought this thread was about me upgrading my PC, not gold leaf thermal paste nuclear fusion reactor haggum blargle... ah, well, if you think this thread is getting random and side-tracked, you should see my mind...

EDIT: After exiting Ragnarok Online (my name is "Ryoken," with no quotes or comma), I looked to see what the temp was, and it was 120F, which is about 49C. Yeah, I've said a lot of different temps, but this one should be correct...

[xRyokenx]

Merry Christmas all.

I got my other 512mb of RAM this morning, I just plugged it in, and discovered in the BIOS that I can set the amount of RAM my video card uses, so instead of 32mb, it's 128mb. You can tell the difference.

[xRyokenx]

Can someone give me advice on overclocking? I have absolutely no idea about any of it, and would prefer not to destroy my PC. Thanks.

[Mitternacht]

Can someone give me advice on overclocking? I have absolutely no idea about any of it, and would prefer not to destroy my PC. Thanks.

I wouldn't recommend overclocking, but as long as you understand when enough is enough, you should be fine. It starts in the BIOS, not any of the program crap. I don't recommend any overclocking program. It's much better to overclock through the BIOS than it is to overclock when windows is running. In the BIOS, there's adjustments for the bus speed, voltage, etc. Take one small step at a time until you notice instability, then back it off a little bit. There, you should have the processor just about as far as it can go, while still being stable.

Wish I could provide more, but this is as much as I know. That is, until my dual-core 64 and MSI board comes in.

[xRyokenx]

I was reading through another thread where someone was saying to not use any programs that OC, to only use the BIOS...

Thanks for the advice... I'll probably wait until progbuddy, who lives about 5 minutes away, can come over and help with it before I do anything.