On Thu, 27 Nov 1997, Frank Sergeant wrote: [ snip ] : : Does anyone have any experience with this? In : the old days, voltage regulators and power transistors : and such hot-running ICs usually were not just attached : to their heatsinks bare, but were smeared with : heatsink/thermal compound first in order to provide better : heat transfer than a bare connection would provide.
A 300W RF amp built without using thermal compound will fail in a hurry (and smell bad, too :) : : However, I have gathered that the typical CPU : heatsink is just put on bare. Is this just laziness : on the part of assemblers or is there some legitimate : reason to think the heatsink compound is not needed : with CPUs? Other than cost, no good reason whatsoever. Most techs I've been around have no idea that thermal compound exists, but I don't consider ignorance a "legitimate excuse" in this case. Personally, I've got a tube of compound at my desk; any PC I end up fiddling with gets its heatsink checked. -- Nathan Norman MidcoNet - 410 South Phillips Avenue - Sioux Falls, SD 57104 phone: (605) 334-4454 fax: (605) 335-1173 mailto://[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.midco.net PGP Key ID: 0xA33B86E9 - Public key available at keyservers PGP Key fingerprint: CE03 10AF 3281 1858 9D32 C2AB 936D C472 -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .