[Liberator]

Okey Dokey, I've got the memory(256mb Kingston PC2700) and I've got the processor(Athlon XP 1800 OEM) and the motherboard will be here in a few days(MSI 745 Ultra).

My question is this, given that I will never OC the chip, what kind of cooling assembly do you guys recomend and given that this is the first time I've ever done a processor assembly, do you recommend thermal paste or thermal pads.  If paste which one and if pads which one?

[Darkage]

I like to use paste but thats my personel preference.

And i put on a big ass cooler on it. A better one then required for the cpu.

[mikhael]

Paste.

If you're cheap like me, you can use standard dialectric grease. It seems to work better even than the "arctic silver" paste and is about 1/10th the price.

[Darkage]

the artic silver like paste worked better then the dialectric grease for me.

[Liberator]

After having read up on them I'm leaning toward a thermal pad of some kind.  What kind of HSF though?

[Zeronet]

Thermal pad.

[magatsu1]

how about watercooling ?

[Ashrak]

Originally posted by magatsu1
how about watercooling ?

yeah what about a watercooling rig?

[Darkage]

If you use properly setup fans then water cooling aint needed.

[Liberator]

Watercooling is out due to budget considerations.  My local supplier has a Volcano 8 that I'm looking at, I just hope they've got a couple of extra thermal pads they can part with.