OEM thermal interface materials

swaaye

Entirely Suboptimal
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I have an Acer Veriton OEM PC (i5 4570) at work that has a CPU fan that likes to rev up with any appreciable load. Today I decided to finally look into what is going on in there. The CPU would reach 100C very quickly in Prime95 and throttle down. The CPU cooler is a fairly typical circular Intel deal that shouldn't have any problems with a 65 W CPU. Acer has a custom screw-down mount for it. Easy to work with.

So I popped the cooler off to see the state of the TIM. I found a graphite thermal pad! I haven't seen one of these in ages. I remember seeing them on 486s. I had to scrape it off with a razor. Fun. I have some Arctic Silver Ceramique and applied that. Temp in Prime95 is now 60-70C with no crazy fan RPM.

Anyone else run into OEMs using graphite pads or any other curious TIMs on modern CPUs?
 
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