Hello, Mark.
Somehow, the "Broken?" thread got sidetracked, and I overheard you
talking with Roy J. Tellason there about cpu chips which don't neeed
thermal compound for the heatsink - -

 RJT>> How can you tell when you have one of those?

 ml>> hummm... it's basically the newer ones... i know that the AMD
 ml>> durons and thunderbirds fell into that catagory... their
 ml>> installation paperwork should carry the necessary info...

Not AFAIK, so I'll ask - What gave you that idea?  AMD OEM packaged
chips I've bought new (Duron 950, Athlon 1.1 and 1.4) don't come with
any installation paperwork. There is a _lot_ of info at the AMD site
under headings like "thermal solutions" - - have you found any info
there at the AMD site which doesn't recommend anything between top of
cpu die cover plate and the heatsink/fan?

Thermal compound seems to be coming with the heatsink/fans these days.
I recently bought some inexpensive ones to use on older, slower Durons
under 1GHz, and those all had a thermal pad on the bottom of heatsink.
Earlier, I had bought some higher quality units - - Thermaltake Volcano
6Cu came with a patch of Bergquist (sp?) material on the bottom, and a
Thermaltake Volcano 6Cu+, which has a stronger, faster fan on it, came
with no pad, but a little cellophane pouch full of thermal compound to
use between the die and the round copper thing on bottom of the
heatsink.



 ML> wait till you get one where the heatsink has four circular foamrubber
 ML> feet in each corner... this is one that goes on the early duron or
 ML> so... on the chip, the actual die is raised and is about the size of
 ML> your little fingernail... that's all the area that the heatsink is to
 ML> touch, too... and there're surface mount chips on the ceramic... too
 ML> much heatsink or getting sloppy can cause a short on the cpu, itself...

I haven't checked the newer AMD chips, but it is the same as you
describe for the AMD Socket A chips I"ve seen here from Duron 700 up
thru Athlon 1.4 GHz.   Top of die is a bit larger on the latter chip.

But about that shorting out - - I see where a number of vendors sell a
"copper shim" for use between the heatsink and chip.  I wonder how those
work without shorting things out?

But Pentium II's, in the original SEC packaging - - some of those came
with passive heatsink apparently permanently riveted on, but for those
which had a removable heatsink or heatsink/fan, I can't recall ever
seeing evidence of any thermal compound being used between the heat
plate of the SEC cartridge and the clip-on heatsink or heatsink/fan.

... Inquiring minds want to know. - Bubba
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