motherboard thermal paste requirements?

[TBSN]

I've got a few relatively simple questions about my motherboard northbridge and southbridge coolers. Also I want to point out that I just spent the last 25 minutes googling (is that even a word now?) this topic but haven't quite found the answers I'm looking for.

I've got an Asus P5K-Deluxe. It doesn't matter much, but a 775 system is probably ancient by your standards :$. The chipset runs quite hot on this motherboard, but I've never had a stability problem at stock speeds. I feel like getting a newer 45nm Core 2 Duo so I can play around with overclocking, i.e. just for fun. Supposedly Asus motherboards are pretty notorious for badly applied thermal tape/grease/whatever, so I thought I'd replace it.

Does it matter what thermal paste goes on the motherboard vs. the CPU? I thought I read that I thought I read that one should use something without capacitance, like arctic silver ceramique rather than the standard arctic silver 5.

Why even bother if the system is stable? Well no reason really, but it might help to replace it (I've had the motherboard for around four years now).

Thanks!

 

[Computers_Plus]

actually you would be better off adding fans to those coolers part of the problem with those heatsinks is they lack any real mass compared to a CPU heatsink so they can not dissipate as much heat

 

[Rifter]

the above poster is correct, good case airflow over the mobo heatsinks is very important.

And changing the thermal paste can also gain you lower temps, from the factory they tend to use thermal pads alot of the time which is not nearly as efficient as paste. Ceramique would be ideal for the paste but i have also used regular AS 5 in the past with no issues.

And i vote for googling to be added as a word!

 

[TBSN]

Ok, thanks for the info. So any thermal paste will be fine I guess. AS5 is the only one I know and they sell it at teh 'shack so I'm all set!

 

[AstroGuardian]

If the heat sinks are hot to the touch then you don't need to change the paste. Hot heat sinks means that there is a good thermal conductivity and therefore good cooling