Got my temps down. Hooray!

[JMerrick]

I was a bit worried about my C2D temps, under TAT they were 72 last time I checked (when I bought it) but everything seemed stable so I didn't worry. Tried it again the other day and it topped at 76, and it rebooted once. Ouch. Heatsink had gotten dusty so that was probably the reason for the rise.

Looking around most people had TAT temps much lower, 50s or 60s. I really didn't want to go to the finicky trouble of reapplying some compound, but today I decided I would buy some, seems like a knock off version of artic silver (Silver TIM by Deepcool). After taking off the HSF (eek) it looked approximately the same colour so I was happy. So I scraped what I could off and cleaned it with a microfibre cloth and some isoprop, seemed like I scratched the copper on the HSF a bit which is something I was worried about.

Then had two goes at applying to the CPU with messy results (mb still in case) and having to clean it off the retainer twice, then decided to apply to the HSF instead. Got a reasonably smooth and thin layer after some fussing and had a few attempts at trying to clip the damn thing back in before I realised I had to retract the pins first. Hrm.

Booted up the computer and it's loading at 2.41 GHz and BIOS i saying it found a new CPU... it seemed to think it was a 1333 FSB part... eek! But I rebooted again and it was back to its normal overclocked 3.00 speed.

So loaded up TAT with fingers crossed hoping I hadn't made things worse. Watched the temps go up and finally stop, wow what a difference! It's now peaked at 63 on core 2 and hovering on 58/60 as we speak.

So it must have been something dodgy with the compound which was on the cooler out of the box, or I scraped or smeared it the wrong way by accident. But now I am real happy. That's more than a 15 degree difference, no doubt some was from just blowing the dust out of the HSF, but still that's awesome. Amazing that I didn't try it sooner.

Now will that compound heat up and sinks into the finer scratches and tiny imperfections, or will it harden (it was quite hard when I scraped it off) and get less effective? Time will tell!

[JMerrick]

Ooh, it's idling in the 30s now. Never thought I'd see that. Used to idle in the high 40s or even 50s. Still a 3-6 degree difference between core 1 and core 2 though.

[JMerrick]

I just came to check when I posted this, barely over a month ago. The C2D stock HSF is a good design but boy does it accumulate dust quickly which causes the cooling to suffer. Between this post and last night, it had crept up about 5 degrees more under load and idle, so I went and blew all the dust out again last night and it's now back to 30/35 idle and 55/56 TAT load (it is colder now, mind you). Amazing how fast the dust builds up, I wonder what the best way to remove it without blowing (spitting...) all over it or spending a fortune on cans of compressed air. There must be some kind of vacuum cleaner attachment good for this.

[Ozzie]

You can use compressed air, but don't start shooting it at the fan to have some fun (it sounds cool, but I wouldn't know)...most fans don't appreciate that.

[SpeedDMN]

My box is getting so dusty I would love to take one of those backpack blowers to it. It is so crowded in there that the little cans of air (expensive to boot) just don't cut it.

[mindx2]

Man I have the exact same problem! I get so much dust in my case and especially on my HSF that I have to go in every month and chip it away (it seems to get hard quickly). I've got so many fans running on my rig that it just constantly sucks the junk in. Anyone have a good solution to cleaning out the dust or keeping it out in the first place ?!!!

[Ozzie]

I just use a brush to loosen things up first. Then the can of air doesn't have to work so hard. For severe cases I have an air compressor that I use...I drag it outside and have at it.

[Kage]

I put a dust filter on my vacuum cleaner and run it in reverse to clean out my case and blow crap outta heatsinks.

[JMerrick]

Unfortunately my vacuum cleaner doesn't function in reverse. Some kind of electrical powered air blower with a fine nozzle would be good, I wonder if you can get those on the cheap. That stuff cakes in there so badly. Maybe some kind of dust filter for the intake on that.