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aus+uk / uk.comp.homebuilt / Reusing thermal grease on CPU?

Reusing thermal grease on CPU?

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From: nomail@nospam.org.invalid (GS)
Newsgroups: uk.comp.homebuilt
Subject: Reusing thermal grease on CPU?
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2023 17:39:08 -0000 (UTC)
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by: GS - Tue, 31 Oct 2023 17:39 UTC

I need to replace the motherboard CR2032 battery on a Dell USFF
machine. But to access the battery you have to remove the heatsink!!

You can't remove the CPU+heatsink as a single item as the cpu
retention lever can't be released until you've removed the heatsink.

The handbook blithely says regarding the heatsink:

"Lift the heat sink/fan assembly, and remove it from the computer.
Lay the assembly with the fan facing downward, and with the thermal
grease facing upward."

"Installing the Heat Sink:
1. Place the heat sink into the chassis.
2. Tighten the captive screws to secure the heat sink to the system
board."

No mention of replacing the thermal grease! Will this work or should
I splash out on some thermal grease + solvent to remove the old
stuff?

It seems crazy that the coin cell is positioned under the heatsink
assembly. I bought this machine as "A1 refurbished" from Morgan
Computers but their "refurbishment" evidently didn't stretch to
replacing the mobo battery as it failed in less than 2 years despite
the pc always being plugged in until I needed to move it recently.

Re: Reusing thermal grease on CPU?

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From: Gordon@leaf.net.nz (Gordon)
Newsgroups: uk.comp.homebuilt
Subject: Re: Reusing thermal grease on CPU?
Date: 1 Nov 2023 03:17:51 GMT
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by: Gordon - Wed, 1 Nov 2023 03:17 UTC

On 2023-10-31, GS <nomail@nospam.org.invalid> wrote:
> I need to replace the motherboard CR2032 battery on a Dell USFF
> machine. But to access the battery you have to remove the heatsink!!
>
> You can't remove the CPU+heatsink as a single item as the cpu
> retention lever can't be released until you've removed the heatsink.
>
> The handbook blithely says regarding the heatsink:
>
> "Lift the heat sink/fan assembly, and remove it from the computer.
> Lay the assembly with the fan facing downward, and with the thermal
> grease facing upward."
>
> "Installing the Heat Sink:
> 1. Place the heat sink into the chassis.
> 2. Tighten the captive screws to secure the heat sink to the system
> board."
>
> No mention of replacing the thermal grease! Will this work or should
> I splash out on some thermal grease + solvent to remove the old
> stuff?

Best practice is to do the solvent new grease route.

If the old grease is still soft then you might get away with it.

Also how hard are you going to drive the CPU?

>
> It seems crazy that the coin cell is positioned under the heatsink
> assembly. I bought this machine as "A1 refurbished" from Morgan
> Computers but their "refurbishment" evidently didn't stretch to
> replacing the mobo battery as it failed in less than 2 years despite
> the pc always being plugged in until I needed to move it recently.

Batteries self discharge so they go flat even with no load on them.

Subject	Author
Reusing thermal grease on CPU?	GS
Reusing thermal grease on CPU?	Gordon