Right, forvige my ignorance, but I have always worked under the assumption that a CPU heatsink should have a flat bottom contacting the flat top of the processor perfectly, with a tiny ammount of thermal compound in between to get rid of any airspace left inbetween the two.
So since my 775 cooler with a flat block and heatpipes going through said block cannot fit my new 1155 board I started looking at new coolers.
To my supprise the heatpipes make direct contact with the CPU leaving many grooves and crevices on the bottom of the cooler that would need much more thermal paste than usual to fill causing less than optimal contact with the CPU. What is going on?
Will, as I imagine, my CPU come out after a couple of years looking like it has been flamegrilled at BurgerKing? Or does the benefit of having direct heatpipe contact outweigh the fact there will be parts of the CPU with a lot more thermal compound to penetrate before getting through to the block, because after these gaps it is not always in contact with a heatpipe.
So since my 775 cooler with a flat block and heatpipes going through said block cannot fit my new 1155 board I started looking at new coolers.
To my supprise the heatpipes make direct contact with the CPU leaving many grooves and crevices on the bottom of the cooler that would need much more thermal paste than usual to fill causing less than optimal contact with the CPU. What is going on?
Will, as I imagine, my CPU come out after a couple of years looking like it has been flamegrilled at BurgerKing? Or does the benefit of having direct heatpipe contact outweigh the fact there will be parts of the CPU with a lot more thermal compound to penetrate before getting through to the block, because after these gaps it is not always in contact with a heatpipe.
I would imagine it's about six and two threes between the direct contact with gaps and a block at the base, but it'll be cheaper not to use the extra metal.