Artic Silver 5 (AS5) gives results.

I'm babysitting for Johanna and Tom this week and so Spencer and I have been logging some hours defending American interests in Battlefield 2. It's an older game (a couple of years) but still awesome. Anyway, Spencer's computer consists of a P4 1.8GHZ (pre LGA775), 1G of DDR Ram, a decent Asus Motherboard and the crowning glory, a nice 6600gt video card. The system performs pretty well given it's age. But it was lagging a bit overall, but especially playing BF2**note**-when spencer plays BF2 he says that it runs fine even after long sessions 1-2 hours. we are using a mod to enhance things and the computer starts to slow down after a bit (1/2~1hr. in). So yesterday, after getting my things together i planned on benching the temps and then replace the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU in an effort to cool the system and hopefully get some results. So i took temps before, at idle and at load.

BEFORE
IDLE: CPU:40C , SYSTEM: 30C, GPU: 60C
LOAD: CPU:60C, SYSTEM: N/A, GPU: N/A

really not too bad considering the how old the tech is and how dusty the inside of this case was.

I didn't load up anything to stress the video card because, flankly, i was running out of time. so the GPU and the SYSTEM temps did not change.

after that was done, i pulled the Video Card and removed the heatsinks. I cleaned both with rubbing alcohol and then applied a small amount of AS5 thermal paste to the die's. That done i reaffixed them to the card and set it aside. Next up, i removed the cpu from it's socket. i started to clean the heatsink when i noticed that a thin piece of metal looking almost like it peeled from the CPU was stuck to it. so i peeled it off (think Aluminum Foil only thicker) and then i got some 220grit sand paper and gently sanded the heatsink down. the only reason for doind this was to get the old thermal compound off. it was so old and i think more of a putty than paste, that it was hard to remove. i did the same to the cpu after repeated cleanings with Alcohol yielded the same results. both cleaned i stuck the processor back in it socket, applied some AS5 and slapped the Heatsink back on. I must also mention, that i aired out the case with a compressor and man that was a lot of dust.

after booting back up these are the results, temp wise:

AFTER
IDLE: CPU:30C, SYSTEM: 30C, GPU: 51C
LOAD: CPU:50C, SYSTEM: N/A, GPU: 58C

I got these rather un-scientifically but the load temps were taken after an hour of BF2 (the GPU) and an all night session of Prime95 (CPU). I can honestly say, i am astonished. I have heard of AS5 helping things out, thermally, but never thought that it would help this much. I'm very happy that i kept some notes this time around to verify temps.

The facts: cleaning the dust from your computer case will cool down the computer. reapplying the thermal paste (if it is old or done incorrectly in the first place) can also help with keeping a computer running cool. using AS5 may do it even better ...yeah who am i kidding, it will.

The results: the computer seems to boot a bit quicker and it ran BF2 pretty good for a bit. we had some issues about an hour in, but now we'll tackle that problem from the software side (reinstall the game, drivers, directX update).

Until next time.