[Cialug] OT: hardware question

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

Last night i started building a new main computer. It has been many 
years since i've done so; so many that last time i didn't need to worry 
about thermal paste on the CPU heat sink (Pentium II machines didn't 
need it). How much thermal paste is the appropriate amount?

I looked up a few tutorials on how to apply it, but the amounts varied 
widely. Some people used just enough so that when it was spread around 
on the CPU and on the heatsink that both looked like they had a thin 
haze on them. But other people really gobbed it on so the CPU looked 
like a frosted cupcake and you could no longer see the actual CPU at 
all. Which is right? I tried putting on an amount towards the lower end 
of the spectrum and fired up the machine for awhile. I haven't 
installed Debian yet but in the BIOS it said the CPU was running at 30 
Celsius. That temperature seemed fairly stable; i let the machine sit 
at the BIOS screen for 1/2 hour and the temperature didn't waver much 
(sometimes it would vary by a degree, but it would usually go back to 
30 after a bit). I don't want to run the machine for very long, though, 
unless i have some other indication that i did it right; looking at the 
temperature while the machine is basically idling in the BIOS doesn't 
seem to me to be the best possible indicator.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Ramaley                            Dial Center 118, Drake University
Network Programmer/Analyst             2407 Carpenter Ave
+1 515 271-4540                        Des Moines IA 50311 USA