Stand-offs are used for a reason...

[Mr. Rude]

It seems our wannabe system builder dodged a bullet. I haven't heard about or seen him since.

Lucky bastard.

PS: Broomjockey, glad this thread helped

[lordlundar]

Actually, the nice people at the store did that for me, for free! And with luck, by the time it ever needs to be reapplied, I'll be upgrading something anyway, so I'll have a better excuse.

That's the typical reason for reapplying it. Even though it dries out over time, the metallic portion in the compound still provides a much better conductive surface. It's a bigger risk than a benefit to keep reapplying the compound outside of part replacement.

It seems our wannabe system builder dodged a bullet. I haven't heard about or seen him since.

Lucky bastard.

Either that or he's too embarrassed to come in after realizing he fubar'd his machine.

[Shabo]

That's the typical reason for reapplying it. Even though it dries out over time, the metallic portion in the compound still provides a much better conductive surface. It's a bigger risk than a benefit to keep reapplying the compound outside of part replacement.

Yep, once it dries out, it pretty much glues the heatsink to the processor, and no matter how careful you are when you are removing the heatsink, you are going to rip the processor out of the socket. I haven't seen AMD switch to pinless CPUs (mine is a Athlon x2 4200, that's the newest AMD I've seen), but thank goodness Intel has with their dual cores. Makes life soooooo much easier.