AMD Sempron 3300+ Heat Sink / Thermal Paste

Factual Questions
1

I just picked up a new AMD Sempron 3300+ with the heat sink and fan. I’m assuming so, but before I destroy anything, the heatsink already has the thermal paste/pad on it, correct (it does appear to be ther)? The illustrated directions don’t show any application of thermal paste but the literature states “Thermal interface material is required for all AMD processors”.

Just making sure.

LarsenMTL

2

If it’s the boxed retail one, then yes, it has a thermal pad on the heatsink.

3

Agreed. But, if you want to play it safe, you can download and run a utility to monitor your CPU core temperature, such as the freeware SpeedFan. Use it to monitor your core temp for the first few hours of use, under heavy usage. If it stays below 50 C or so even under heavy processor load, you’re fine.

4
      • The thermal paste is a square pad of grey-silvery stuff already on the heatsink; there is a protective decal over it that you remove first.
  • If you built the PC yourself, many retail-grade mobos have their own temperature monitoring programs available from the manufacturer, and these tend to be more accurate as they have “correction factors” built in that account for the differences in how hot the temp probe is, and what the temperature probe is attempting to measure.
  • I like the Scythe Ninja heatsink also; on most non-overclocked processors it can be run totally fanless if your case airflow is decent. No fan to fail, never needs cleaning, totally silent, costs around $45 and it is BIG, you need to measure to make sure it will fit in your case before ordering.
    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=scythe+ninja+buy&btnG=Google+Search
    http://www.silentpcreview.com/article251-page5.html
    ~
5

One thing to check: Some pre-pasted heatsinks have plastic over the paste to protect the paste before installation. That needs to be peeled off. Note that the pad-style “pastes” are all one piece and shouldn’t be peeled off at all. So just make sure there’s not a cellophane-like layer on top the paste.

6

Thanks all.