ml>> wait till you get one where the heatsink has four circular
 ml>> foamrubber feet in each corner... this is one that goes on the
 ml>> early duron or so... on the chip, the actual die is raised and is
 ml>> about the size of your little fingernail... that's all the area
 ml>> that the heatsink is to touch, too... and there're surface mount

 MMC> That description of the die size and the raised area sounds
 MMC> very similar to that of the Intel P-III.  Pretty useless
 MMC> amount of area for conducting heat.  Intel shipped the P-IIIs
 MMC> with heatsink/fan combos that had a wad of what I like to call
 MMC> 'pink bubble gum' stuck on for the thermal contact area.

yes, some of those heatsinks do have thermal stuff already in place... the
description is of a basic socket 370 chip... the AMD durons and athlons
also came in a similar design and had the same type of heatsinks...
however, one difference between them, other than the socket pin design, was
that some heatsinks could not be used on the other manufacturer's chips due
to specific design tolerances and such... mind you, i've not been as
involved in the industry in the last 2.5-3 years as i was before...

 ml>> chips on the ceramic... too much heatsink or getting sloppy can
 ml>> cause a short on the cpu, itself...

 MMC> I didn't know anyone made an electrically conductive thermal
 MMC> compound.  None that I've ever used were electrically
 MMC> conductive.

oh, yes... it may not supposed to be electrically conductive but... there
is some that is, though... part of the design is that it has copper
particles in it, IIRC... try googling for thermal paste and see what all
you come up with... some stuff is extremely good for carrying off almost
all heat while other stuff just does pass the specs to be called thermal
paste...

i remember a friend talking about installing a watercooling system in one
of his machines and the heck he went thru... one problem was due to the use
of a specific thremal paste that was excellent in its disapation properties
but it was electrically conductive, too...

)\/(ark