Need help - Temps out of control after reapplying paste

FlyingPig

FlyingPig

FlyingPig

Associate
Joined
10 Jul 2011
Posts
711
Location
London
Hi,

You may remember my thread from last month about some cooling issues on my rig.
It took me a while to get to it, but I've finally reapplied the thermal paste. Unfortunately, it seems that I've only made the problem worse and CPU temperatures are higher than ever. I've only got Chrome open at the moment and it's sitting at 80C :rolleyes: The blend test in Prime95 takes it to high 90's.

I read a lot of instructions and watched videos on how to remove and reapply thermal paste, but obviously I messed it up somewhere. I'm using Arctic Silver 5 on an i5 2500K CPU, and a Corsair H60 (v1) cooler. I tried to remove some dust with some compressed air but hardly anything came out of it and I can see through the radiator, and feel the air coming out, so it seems to work OK from what I can see.

Which means it must be the thermal paste. Below are some pictures. I tried 3 times. First time was following the AS5 instructions, using the vertical line method and "priming" the heatsink. I'm pretty sure I used too much, a rookie mistake I guess:

first.jpg

first2.jpg


Cleaned it all off with 99% Isoproyl and reapplied, this time using the pea method:

2015-03-06%2015.20.19%20%28Medium%29.jpg

2015-03-06%2015.20.09%20%28Medium%29.jpg


It seemed better this time but probably needed a bit more, so cleaned it all off again, also the edges that had some paste residue left, and reapplied, this time leaving the heatsink "clean" and using a vertical line again on the CPU. Temperatures are still high.

Any ideas? This is all very frustrating but I hope I can fix it myself somehow.
 
Last edited:
I would say clean again thoroughly and re-apply a small pea sized amount of paste; it almost looks like the paste has reacted or 'crazed' with something, much like aerosol paint would...

did you use a clean cloth to clean it with?

Edit - just realised I have been a moron :D ... sorry :L

What CPU is it?

Which thermal paste have you used?

have you been careful and seated the block evenly?
 
Last edited:
I used coffee filters to clean it with, but then this was my first time doing this so who knows what I did wrong. Seemed easy enough on Youtube videos. I was careful when seating the heatsink.

Question: I'm thinking of buying a normal air cooler like the Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-001-RT&groupid=701&catid=2330&subcat=2666) and to just take out that 4 year old AIO Corsair H60 cooler. Good plan?
Who knows there is a leak there somewhere as there is indeed blue around the edge of the heatsink, though I can't see any spills on the motherboard. I'd need to have a look at how the air would have to be pushed out of my rig then as the AIO is coupled to that radiator at the back (and is on at 100% all the time now, making a lot of noise in an attempt to cool it down).
 
That large grey area on the heatsink should have been cleaned back to shiny copper, the pea should have spread out - usually under heat after a reasonable length of use.

I think you should really clean both surfaces again and spread the TIM over the CPU surface carefully. Make sure you really have seated the heat sink properly as my impression is that it hasn't been fixed in place well enough.

Also the Heatsink shouldn't really be showing any blue stain!

Andi.
 
The surfaces of your heatspreader and block could be dirty and mated without thermal paste and you still wouldn't get these temps.

Something else is wrong.
 
I may try it again later on today, but I'm not sure what to do differently. I contacted OcUK again as this rig was built by them, so let's see what they say. I might try to get in touch with Corsair too as it could be the AIO cooler, version 1 of the H60 was a bit dodgy apparently (but out of warranty). Then again, even when I took off the heatsink last month to have a look and put it back on, the temperatures never reached 90C when simply browsing the web, so the variable here is me removing the original paste and putting on the Arctic Silver 5 paste.
As a sidenote: am I damaging my 2500K chip while still using this computer for office stuff? (temps around 70-95). From what I can see it should be able to handle it until I find a solution.
 
Hmmm, you may be on to something. I didn't realise they were supposed to spin that fast. Here's what my HWMON is saying:

h60rpm.PNG


It's that 1800rpm, right? That should be higher then?
 
that pea sized thermal paste hasn't covered all the area on heat spread on cpu so you have good thermal coupling where thermal paste is there. But where there isn't thermal paste, the heat is just transferring from metal to metal which isn't good as metal surface will have small defects...thus needing thermal paste to act as transfer medium to fill the gaps.

also arctic silver 5 is very thick. it doesn;t really spread out that much...so i think u need to apply thin layer of thermal paste evenly across the top of the cpu heat spread...which is the method I have been used for last 20 years of building pc.

what you had before applying the pea sized paste was absolutely fine. the marking of paste is not graze or damages, it is simply because the adhesion between the paste and metal. thermal paste has viscosity and it will act like glue especially when high pressure is applied i.e. air is pushed out. so when you try to remove the heat sink from the cpu, the suction pressure will give until your prying force becomes larger than a given surface area...and that's mark of the paste...a bit like faults in crust of earth...

i would recommend you do what you did before. how was your temps before?

and your pump appears to be working also
 
Last edited:
Looks like a duff pump then.

FlyingPig said:
I'd need to have a look at how the air would have to be pushed out of my rig then as the AIO is coupled to that radiator at the back (and is on at 100% all the time now, making a lot of noise in an attempt to cool it down).
Click to expand...

Just fit a fan where the radiator currently sits after you've removed it.
 
Pc-guy, so are you saying you think what I had in the first picture was fine?
Temperatures before were also high, though nowhere near as high, and I got reboots when gaming for longer sessions, which was the whole reason for me ordering and reapplying the thermal paste. See
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18653970 for the original thread.

In the meantime I've actually taken the radiator and fan off completely and removed all the dust. Not that there was much. Doesn't really seem to make much difference, but I'm glad I did it as I understand this cooler better now and at least I know what to do when installing a new one -- doesn't seem like too big of a big deal.

2015-03-07%2012.40.10%20%28Medium%29.jpg


Speaking of which, I think I might just order a basic air cooler and see how I get on with it. Am I correct in assuming that all I need to order is something like the Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler and that I can reuse the big Corsair fan that pushes the air out of the case? (and leaving that whole radiator out then)

Don't know much about coolers at all but this one seems like a new kid on the block that is good value, and even if it doesn't make a difference for me it won't have broken the bank. Any other suggestions?
 
FlyingPig said:
McGraw, I'm confused about your statement on your H60 fan spinning at 4500rpm. Just had a look at the official specs at http://www.corsair.com/en-gb/hydro-series-h60-cpu-cooler and it says Fan Speed: Up to 1700 RPM.

Incidentally this fan has always been the loudest thing in my PC and I should really be replacing it anyway I guess.
Click to expand...

That is fan speed, they don't give you the pump speed on their spec list for the H60. HWmonitor just reports it as a fan because it can't tell the difference between a pump or a fan, it just knows there's something connected to the fan header spinning at 1800rpm.

Edit: I wonder if the header you have the pump connected to is not set to 100% in the BIOS? I don't know much about the H60 and whether the pump speed can be varied or not, might be worth a quick check.
 
Last edited:
That's my 4690k at 4.6Ghz + 1.2V Core with a H60 on Stock Paste at 100% under Aida 64 after 20 minutes.

As people suggested regardless of the thermal paste to have these problems in the first place it in my opinion points at a faulty cooler which could be pump/blockage etc I'd imagine.

Screen Shot not working but average temps of mid 50s.

At Stock my CPU idles mid 20s and maxes mid 40s without maxing the fans RPM.
 
Telecaster said:
That is fan speed, they don't give you the pump speed on their spec list for the H60. HWmonitor just reports it as a fan because it can't tell the difference between a pump or a fan, it just knows there's something connected to the fan header spinning at 1800rpm.

Edit: I wonder if the header you have the pump connected to is not set to 100% in the BIOS? I don't know much about the H60 and whether the pump speed can be varied or not, might be worth a quick check.
Click to expand...

Good shout. The pump speed can be varied but only using bios or 3rd party software I believe.

My cpu runs stupidly hot unless the pump is set to run at full speed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom