Testing and Results
Test Rig:TBird 1GHz
Abit KT7 Raid
Alpha PAL6035
Well I started off by testing the CPU temp with the cheaper stuff, which I had been using before getting this and it wasn't good. It was 52 degrees after load and it didn't even need to run anything massively for this. Bear in mind I've the Coolermaster case with all the fans on it, it shouldn't get that hot. The case temp was even high... It was 36 degrees! Therefore this CPU was giving off a lot of heat, uh oh I hear you cry! Well not really, so what if it is so hot? Well it was stable... it never crashed and never had any problems at all, so why would I want it any cooler? Well to overclock of course! This CPU is a green core, therefore it won't overclock too far, and one needed to make sure that all was ok before thinking about doing it.
So I took off the Alpha. Being very careful, I wiped off the white paste and put on some Arctic silver, rebuilt the system and turned on. I jumped in to the bios to check temps, and I nearly cried. The temp was rising massively, and it hit 60 degrees! I was worried, so I pulled the power from the back very quickly, took the PC apart and re applied the paste. I rebuilt... and nothing. I thought uh oh there goes the CPU, but no, I was over generous with the paste and I went in and cleaned it all up, put a little Arctic silver on and rebuilt. I powered up and jumped in to the bios, yay! The temp was stable at 36 and I was well happy. I jumped into Windows and started playing Q3A and got well in to the game. I was playing for a while, well about an hour actually, and it was damn good ;-) ... back to the review. I then checked the temp with the probe which I had mounted on it and it wasn't bad. It was now at 41 but I wasn't worrying... this was nothing compared to what it was before the paste had done the job!
Now on to overclocking. Before I couldn't get my PC in to Windows at 1100 MHz, (110 * 10) but after putting the paste on I could. This would make me think that it was a heat issue rather than a CPU issue which I had previously thought. Windows would boot at 1120MHz, as did the FSB + Option on the Abit KT7 Motherboard, and it ran for an hour or so doing seti. I checked the temp and it was at 49, which was still a lot lower than before the paste, therefore it proves how good this paste is!
Results:
