I'm building a new pc, and I have an athalon x2 4600 and it came with a heatsink and fan. Some people were complaining this heatsink was running hot, but someone suggested not to use thermal paste and it ran around 30 degrees. Should I or shouldnt I use thermal paste or a pad, the directions arent very good. I have never been told NOT to use any before
cool i remember u now ure the dude that says athalon instead of athlon anyways if the heatsink already has thermal grease on it u shouldnt do it but if it doesnt come with any u should put some thermal grease just a lil drop on the middle thats it
use silver based thermal paste if you can get it, it will knock 3 or 4 more degrees c of your temp over zinc based, but you only need to use a drop about the size of a grain of rice and then spread about. more paste does not mean more cooling. the thiner the better. you just need enough to fill the microscopic pits you cant see with the human eye, nothing more, but[bold] always use something[/bold]
use arctic silver 5, and remove the thermal pad on the heatsink if there is included on the one you bought
ok, so now that I'm thinking I have another question. Would a 4400 actually be a better decision than a 4600? The 4400 has a 2 x 1MB L2 cache, where the 4600 only has a 2 x 512KB L2 cache. The price difference isn't that great (around $30) so which would be better. I'm not planning to overclock, so which is better a 2.2Ghz with 2 x 1MB L2 cache, or 2.4GHz with 2 x 512KB L2 cache?
you realy want to post this in the overclocking thread. imo and i could be wrong, i think that at stock speeds they will be about the same, as the extra clock speed of the 46 will counter the extra cache in the 44, and vise versa, but when you oc them it realy is pot luck how good the particular chip is you get, after just having a quick look around it appears that some 4400 have been known to hit 3ghz but the 4600 have only been known to hit between 2.8/2.9ghz. like i said ask the overclockers in their thread which they think would be best have a look at some benchmark scores on tomshardware cpu section that will give you a good idea of what they can do at stock. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/cpu/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=478&model2=477&chart=174
