This week, I had planned to reinstall the home desktop CPU. It was running at 85°C. Way too hot for a Pentium-D 2.8 GHz which apparently should run at a maximum of 64°C. I guess I should be thankful for Intel throttling which surely has prevented the CPU from frying. Ilango, who is one of my friends in Chennai, asked me to reinstall it, and to make sure the heatsink pins make a click sound.

So, I opened it up, and found spots where the thermal grease was not properly coated. With ample funds in hand, rushed to the Richy Street in Chennai, ready to buy some Artic Silver (which I heard is the best and quite costly). Most vendors did not have any in stock – no arctic silver and no material close to thermal paste. They were offering me heat-sink and fan combinations which cost Rs. 150-250. Since my heatsink had a copper bottom and the fan was ok, I didn’t buy any.

Finally, one shop offered me some content in a syringe costing Rs. 5. It contained zinc(II) oxide material. Looked Intel original, so bought it.

Applying it was tricky. I ended up getting more than half the material on my fingers. Sticky stuff – no wonder it’s called grease. Luckily the zinc is not toxic. Not as bad as super glue, but being a sticky grease, tough to get it off.

After re-installing, temperatures are down. The heatsink wasn’t properly installed before. One of the pins had splayed (due to the small holes in the motherboard) and didn’t lock. Still planning to replace the grease as I lost most of it on my fingers. I’ll try to post some snaps of the stuff then.

You may want to refer to the wikipedia page on thermal grease to learn more on how to apply the stuff.