In a personal computer (PC), the biggest enemy of performance is heat. Nowhere is this truer than in the case of the central processing unit (CPU). Cooling for the CPU can be accomplished by either air or watercooling, but either way, the CPU is connected to the cooling system by way of a flat metal piece. No matter how hard manufacturers try, neither this metal piece (the bottom of the heat sink in the case of air cooling, and the CPU block in watercooling) nor the top of the CPU will be perfectly flat. The little imperfections in the surfaces of both of these components hold heat in, and in turn affect how well your cooling will cool the processor. Thermal paste fills in these gaps, eliminating the excess heat.

Some heatsinks have a thermal pad on them, furthering the cooling power of the heatsink. In these cases it is not necessary to apply thermal paste, but it will still improve the contact of the heatsink to the CPU. Make sure you remove the plastic cover from the thermal pad first, though.

For most people, the difference in how you apply thermal paste and which type you use will not matter, but for those who insist on getting the utmost power from your rig (and I'm assuming you are one of these people seeing as you are reading this article), the few degrees of heat you save will make a difference.

PASTE:

The most commonly used thermal paste by the end user is Arctic Silver 5. Specific instructions for the application of this product can be found on their website, www.arcticsilver.com.

There are, however, other brands out there, and the application process may differ from brand to brand. This guide is based on Arctic Silver 5, though, as it provides great performance at a low price.

CLEANING:

Before starting, you must remove the thermal paste left on from previous applications from both the CPU and the heatsink. NOTE: You may skip this step if using a brand new CPU and heatsink, neither of which have pre-applied thermal paste. Iso-Proply alcohol is highly recommended, although nail varnish remover is also acceptable. Arctic Silver also sells it's own cleaner in the ArctiClean if you feel this is necessary. Use a clean, lint-free cloth and wipe the surface clean. Be sure not to touch the surface after you have completed the cleaning, as you will then have to repeat the process.

APPLICATION:

This varies depending upon what type of processor you have, and whether it has an exposed core, or a heat spreader. The basics are the same, in that either way you apply the paste to the CPU and install the clean heatsink/waterblock as the instructions dictate.

EXPOSED CORE:

When applying thermal paste to an exposed core, simply put a small amount of paste on the top and spread it, ensuring you do so in a thin and even manner. Be careful not to use too much, as this will put more material for the heat to travel through before it reaches the heatsink/waterblock, drastically reducing the cooling performance. Spread it very thin and even. It should be no thicker than half of a grain of uncooked rice. After doing this, simply apply the heatsink/waterblock as the instructions tell you to do so.

SINGLE CORES WITH HEATSPREADER:

Heatspreaders are put in place to aid the heat transfer from the CPU to the heatsink/waterblock. These increase the size of the CPU, however, and as such it is not necessary to cover the entire CPU with thermal paste. Simply put a blob in the center of the heatspreader (the size of one grain of uncooked rice for an Intel CPU, slightly larger for an AMD CPU), and let pressure take care of spreading the paste as you apply the heatsink/waterblock.

DUAL CORE WITH HEATSPREADER:

The process is the same as with single core CPUs, but in this case you want a line as opposed to a blob. This is to aid in the cooling of both cores. To make sure you put the line in the correct direction, make sure the corner with the gold triangle is in the bottom left corner, and then apply from top to bottom.

QUAD CORE WITH HEATSPREADER:

For quad core CPUs, the process is the same as with dual core CPUs, except this time, the line should be horizontal as opposed to vertical.

FINAL NOTE:

Please keep in mind that, should the heatsink/waterblock be removed from the CPU, you will need to clean the heatsink/waterblock once again and reapply the thermal paste, as the airtight seal between them will have broken. Thanks for reading to the end, and I hope you enjoy this and other articles I intend to write in the future!

Need for speed and storage

My computer is four years old and running a bit slow. I hadn't realized how slow until a member of the family showed me their new laptop and the speed that they could do things. And so I realized that something needed to be done.

There were two problems. I have a huge collection of photos and they are clogging up my hard drive. So I needed a way of storing them off the hard drive. Secondly the programs wee taking along time to run and load - this is a sign that the computer is lacking RAM. RAM (random access memory) is the size of brain power that the computer can call on at any one time to perform what you want it to do. My first computer had a minuscule RAM and my present one has 256MB but today that is small. I run Windows XP but to run Vista in its most basic version they recommend a minimum of 1 GB RAM.

Easy to fix

Both these problems are easy to fix. Lets deal with the storage first. My computer has a fast 54x CD player in it. This is great for loading programs and was state of the art when I bought the system but it is now out of date. DVDs have mostly replaced CDs for computer storage. They can hold much larger amount of information and also can be used for multi media such as storing video clips. I was attracted by the idea of saving my entire collection of several thousand photos onto one DVD.

Unplug the old and plug in the new

What makes it easy to take out the old CD drive and put in a new DVD writer drive is that there is an industry standard. To put it very simply they all have the same plugs in the back and are all the same size and so you should be able to take the back off, take one drive out, put the other one in , put the plugs into the same sockets in the back and then start it up and off it goes. Windows XP on my machine recognized the new hardware and the disk supplied with it made it simple to install. So there it is.

Undo the screws, take out the three lugs ( one for the power, one for the sound and one wide ribbon with loads of pins that connects the drive to the main board on the computer and plug them carefully back into the same holes in the new one. I am not a techie person but I did this first time and it worked. Be careful - there is a little plug on the back of most drives which you have to set to either master or slave. If you are replacing an existing drive just make sure that it is the same setting as the one that you are taking out.

Problem

The only problem I had was that the floppy disk drive didn't work after I put the side back on. This caused a hic up in the boot program - this means it didn't start properly. I took the side off and found that I had accidentally knocked the power plug out of the back of the floppy disk drive when I put the new DVD drive in. A simple but silly mistake so be careful not to pull any plugs out accidentally.

Its all modules

You can see from this a computer is all made up of modules. They are all attached to the motherboard where the main processing chip is located. This can be seen as it will have a big fan on top of it as there processors can get very hot. The RAM memory is plugged directly into the motherboard.

Adding RAM

With my computer I had a motherboard handbook. This have details of the number of slots available to add extra RAM. The specification told me I had 2 DDM slots and only one of them was used and had a 256MB ram card plugged into it. I took the side off the computer and located the empty slot. I looked at the spec on the existing ram and the max possible in the handbook. I looked online at my favorite computer components supplier and found a special deal on exactly the same Kingston 256DDM ram so I bought another one the same.

In older computers you used to have to have pairs of matching RAM cards but with DDM you can put in any combination. So for under £10 ($20US) I doubled my RAM to 512MB. (the handbook said the motherboard could accept a maximum of 2GB RAM but these are much more expensive and I didn't have that amount of money to spend on an upgrade at this time. When adding RAM into an empty slot there should be nothing else to do as the computer will recognize the RAM instantly and start working faster immediately.

I surprised myself

So with little technical knowledge and for very little money I have transformed my four year old desktop computer. And the most amazing thing is that for a non technical person like myself it was relatively easy and worked first time.