Fitting a Tuniq Tower

furnace · 19 Mar 2007 at 10:18

I'm over to a friends later to re-fit his Tuniq Tower which is running pretty hot.

We did the credit card method to apply the thermal paste, but I think we'll do the horzontal line method this time because his temps aren't great. I guess his IHS isn't perfectly flat so isn't making perfect contact, and needs more grease to fill in the gaps...

Can someone try and describe how tight we should tighten the screws, too? I've never screwed a cooler onto a mobo and neither has he, so it might be too loose.

Also, we didn't take the cover off the backplate's sticker because he didn't really want it stuck to his mobo. There's no problems with that are there..?

Any advice on getting his CPU as cool as possible with this cooler are appreciated

He has great air circulation (Antec 900 with the side off) so no problem there. Cheers :cool:

azzerz · 19 Mar 2007 at 10:23

I fitted mine last month...

Small line of thermal stuff worked fine for me

As for screws... I screwed them pretty tight(don't go over the top though..) because of the springs that are included..

If I can do it... you can too

Combat squirrel · 19 Mar 2007 at 12:05

No id use the credit card method, cover the ihs (top of cpu) in a ultra-pico-micro thin layer will always give you better results than a line down middle of ihs (as long as its defo as thin as iv just said !). As for bolting on the TT - as tight as you dare go, the tighter the better..........iv actually used my own nuts 'n' bolts to screw it down on to the mainboard backplate, the board looks abit like a letter 'U' lol,

but ma gawd its bolted on well.......(obviously dont do it this tight unless you know exactly what your doing ! /disclamier!) I get 41c load on my opty at 2.75 after 24 hours dual prime

furnace · 19 Mar 2007 at 14:46

When we fitted this Tuniq first time round, we tightened each of the screws - top left then bottom right, then the other two. We went over each of them a few times as it seemed they were loosening up each time we tightened another up.

At first the screws would easily spin, but then it feels like it's a little stiffer. So we screwed through that (no sexual enuendos please) until we met 'resistance', where it felt like we might start squashing something - but we could, if we wanted, screw it a lot tighter.

When you screw things, it goes like... Easy twisting -> Initial Resistance -> Hard resistance -> Pulling things really tight together -> Ruining screws thread

But I didn't know where up the scale to go... lol. Nor did he.

When you screw it in, what is it pressing against? Is all the pressure going from the CPU to the pins? So would the pins be taking the lump of the pressure, and bend if it's done up too tight?

I think I'll have a look at the base of the Tuniq when it's off, and see what contact it's making with the CPU. If the whole base of the Tuniq is covered in paste, then it must be making fine contact already and wasn't on tight enough :confused:

pl2k1 · 19 Mar 2007 at 15:44

mine are fairly tight, but easy enough to loosen if required. Just make sure you don't stick the backplate onto the mobo though as it is a pain to remove.

melbourne720 · 22 Mar 2007 at 10:07

If you want to lower the temps, replace the fan with a nexus or yate loon. Worked very well for me, and is quiet enough to leave on full pelt.

monke_underlord · 26 Mar 2007 at 19:32

pl2k1 said:
mine are fairly tight, but easy enough to loosen if required. Just make sure you don't stick the backplate onto the mobo though as it is a pain to remove.

Errrm!!! and if u have, how do u get da damn fing off :eek:

, my mobos dead and i wanna move the tuniq over to my new board, any suggestions as to removing the back plate from the mobo (without destroyin the mobo)

any ideas would be mucho appreciated!!

CompMan · 26 Mar 2007 at 19:34

I always use a tab off a rizla packet to spread the arctic silver
always works a treat.

quantumisation · 26 Mar 2007 at 20:37

screw it till you cant move the heatsink, isnt that easy?

PhillyDee · 26 Mar 2007 at 20:39

monke_underlord said:
Errrm!!! and if u have, how do u get da damn fing off , my mobos dead and i wanna move the tuniq over to my new board, any suggestions as to removing the back plate from the mobo (without destroyin the mobo)

any ideas would be mucho appreciated!!

Very sharp stanley blade. Just push it through the sticky stuff all the way round. just mind your fingers. Dont wanna end up thumbless.

furnace · 26 Mar 2007 at 21:05

Right, well we managed to get it screwed in and now have load temps of 45'c max at 3Ghz! That's in Intel TAT 'n' all

Memory's running at 833Mhz.

We screwed it in pretty tight tbh. A fair few turns after the heatsink stopped moving, but not so tight it was going to start crushing stuff. Any tighter and it probably would have started crushing things, tough.

He had an IHS with a "trough" in it :S We had to put a fair amount of AS5 to fill in the little ditch in the middle.. lol. The IHS quality on these processors is simply shocking.

CompMan · 26 Mar 2007 at 21:48

temps will go up a tad after a few days i find
mine was 40-45c full load now it can hit 55c which is fine though
if running orthos.

spb251272 · 27 Mar 2007 at 10:46

I screwed mine down pretty tight, but I did it a bit at a time, moving diagonally around the heatsink. Seems fine, and gives max temps of 55c under load at 3.6Ghz with fan on about 1600rpm. Definitely tempted to replace the fan at some point.

JeffyB · 27 Mar 2007 at 12:11

I'm also looking into replacing my tuniqs fan, it is good shifts a lot of air just above 1700rpm and it gets far too noisy for my liking.

melbourne720 · 27 Mar 2007 at 13:45

JeffyB said:
I'm also looking into replacing my tuniqs fan, it is good shifts a lot of air just above 1700rpm and it gets far too noisy for my liking.

Nexus fan, left on full will get you much lower load and idle temps. Best PC mod I ever did.

JeffyB · 27 Mar 2007 at 14:15

I have also been looking at the Sharkoon Silent Eagle 2000 looks like another good fan. Choices choices.

Mansize_tissue · 27 Mar 2007 at 21:33

What thermal pastes are everyone using with this cooler? I'm tempted to jump on the Arctic Silver 5 band wagon, but i heard their MX-1 paste is better.

Darren1987 · 27 Mar 2007 at 22:01

im using AS5 with mine. 31 idle 43 at load @3ghz

Bigmonty · 28 Mar 2007 at 22:40

I must be doing something wrong. With a 6300 and TT 120 @ 3ghz I get 45 idle and about 54 load. I spread the AS thermal compound out over the whole plate of the CPU cover using a credit card. It wasn't an overly thin layer in that I couldn't see the cover under the paste but if I spread it any thinner I would probably start to see it.

Is this right or am I doing something wrong?

furnace · 28 Mar 2007 at 23:26

Bigmonty said:
I must be doing something wrong. With a 6300 and TT 120 @ 3ghz I get 45 idle and about 54 load. I spread the AS thermal compound out over the whole plate of the CPU cover using a credit card. It wasn't an overly thin layer in that I couldn't see the cover under the paste but if I spread it any thinner I would probably start to see it.

Is this right or am I doing something wrong?

In my mates DS4, the capacitors were holding it up by literally a tenth of a millimeter

So make sure its orientated so that nothing's holding the Tuniq's base up slightly.

Also, take the Tuniq off the CPU, and look at where the paste is on the bottom of the heatsink. If it's not covering the whole base of the heatsink, but it is covering the whole of the CPU, then your CPU isn't making great contact with the Tuniq (your IHS is concave/convex/whatever).

Try putting a line of AS5 on the CPU - don't spread it - and then just put the Tuniq Tower on so that it squashes the paste as you put the heatsink on.

TBH applying a thin layer with a card is only best with lapped CPUs when you know they're perfectly flat. At least with these Core2Duo's, because they have such bad IHS's.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appinstruct/as5/ins_as5_intel_dual_wcap.pdf
^ follow those instructions