Thinkpads Forum

I'm about to upgrade my 650 to an 850Mhz CPU and was wondering how I should fit the heatsink. I learned that the thermal pad only came with a new heatsink and does not have an IBM P/N. The heatsink has been discontinued and the "working pulls" I found had the pad scraped off. I tried pulling the heatsink off the 650 (after removing the screws) and it's on kinda tight and I'd rather keep it as a unit/spare rather than breaking that bond. Is it OK to use thermal grease like Arctic Silver or is there too much gap between the HS and CPU for grease to take up? Also, is it possible to read CPU temperature? I haven't found whether the mmc2 supports this. Thanks.

it's wise to _completly_ remove and replace the thermal compound when doing this sort of upgrade. though you'll never get 100% of the old stuff off, using some isopropyl alcohol you'll be able to get both the top of the proscessor and the bottom of the heat sink visibly clean.

Artic Silver is suitable. As long as the heat sink is installed properly the contact will be firm and the 'gap' will be filled with the Artic Silver.

How many degrees will all that extra work save over just making the swap and recycling the putty? Just a few, really. But every one counts.!

Yes, OEM thermal pads (more like thermal insulators) are the first thing to go when doing a desktop CPU upgrade! My first time doing this on a notebook and I don't want to keep the covers loosely assembled indefinitely. My biggest concern is that there is some standoff distance between the HS/CPU on the 600X where a thick pad is needed, otherwise Arctic Silver is the way to go. Is there a thermal diode on the mmc2 module that could be used to read CPU temperature from Windoze? Thanks.