Legit Reviews

Finally got my 2600k upgrades in place but I think I may have messed up on the installation of the Corsair A50 air cooler I bought as the temps I believe are high.

Stock clocked. Idle seems to be around 37-40C and playing Crysis 2 and TF2 it seems to max around 59C. I am using the Asus AI suite monitor to check temps.

Now the installation guide and a video I watched showed the A50 getting installed with a pea sized amount of TIM on the middle of the cpu. Which I did, and then screwed down the cooler as instructed, 1 turn every screw rotating until all are tight. But the temps seem high, and I really have to wonder if I used too little TIM on it; or too much maybe.

Am I worrying needlessly and the temps are normal or acceptable? Or should I reseat the heatsink?

Re-seat it, but place 5 small pea sized dots in a 5 pattern on the CPU, one in the center, then one in between the center and each corner.

The A50 is a HDT cooler. If you pull it off you will see the TIM didn't spread passed the center pipe. It gets caught up in the gaps between the base and the pipe.

Like this


Pull it off, clean both cooler and CPU with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol and redo the TIM like this. Out of all the ways to put TIM on, this is the best I have found for HDT coolers.

Good concept but I could never get that to work properly. There is the X pattern, the Plus pattern, spreading the thermal paste evenly across the entire surface, spread it on the heat sink evenly, 1 small pea sized in the middle, one large pea size in the center. On HDT types of coolers you can put a small amount of thermal paste on the grooves then then push it in to them. There are so many different ways it is not even funny. Try one way then if that dont work try another. one step at a time, to find the way that works best for you.

I pulled it off, and it did looks surprisingly like Bubba's first picture. So I decided to try it his way and I put the lines of tim on the heat pipes, and I booted back up and the temps are about the same, 36-38 as I type this. I am all out of goop, and trying to stress it the max temp I got was 61 with Core Temp showing the max being 98, so I am going to leave it as is for a couple weeks then get some Artic silver and try again.


*or maybe it did work. Just came back after going down and getting some food and core temp now shows lows of 33C for each core.

What TIM are you using? The best to get would be tuniq TX-3 or TX-4. AS is long time outdated

I use the TX-4 with the corsair A70 and CPU OC'd to 4.7Ghz @ 1.440V and my folding temps never go over 62C

oh and bubba is completely right, even though, the way I've done it was spreading the TIM evenly in a thin layer on the CPU, covering the whole surface...

In my experiences with thermal paste it is up to the individual and the heat sink itself because not all are the same. As far as thermal paste I personally like Gelid Solutions Xtreme paste, Noctua's TIM. I been trying out Antecs Formula 7 nano diamond, which works really good. If you have no choice you can use Cooler Master thermal fusion, Arctic silvers Ceramic, Arctic Cooling MX4 will do the job quite well.

I used the TIM that came with it. It's been over a week now, and I am really dam satisfied with this CPU. I currently have it setup so it Turbos to 4.5ghz, but idles at 1.65ghz, and the temp so far has maxed at around 60. The 2600k at 4.5ghz is just phenomenal and I am going to leave it like this I think. Nothing seems to slow down this machine.

Sttm wrote:I used the TIM that came with it. It's been over a week now, and I am really dam satisfied with this CPU. I currently have it setup so it Turbos to 4.5ghz, but idles at 1.65ghz, and the temp so far has maxed at around 60. The 2600k at 4.5ghz is just phenomenal and I am going to leave it like this I think. Nothing seems to slow down this machine.

Yep, I was never been so satisfied with a build before, like this one. No compromises and super fast, super stable

Sttm wrote:I used the TIM that came with it. It's been over a week now, and I am really dam satisfied with this CPU. I currently have it setup so it Turbos to 4.5ghz, but idles at 1.65ghz, and the temp so far has maxed at around 60. The 2600k at 4.5ghz is just phenomenal and I am going to leave it like this I think. Nothing seems to slow down this machine.

Cool.

Also some TIM's have a cure time, some don't. My current fave is the Gelid GC Extreme (zero cure), I've been getting better themps than I ever did with AS5 (200 hour cure time). So if you ever get a hankering to drop temps a little more take a look at swapping the paste out. I know going from AS Céramique to Gelid GC Extreme it dropped temps a good 10*C degrees on average.