I shoulda said that to begin with lol

Well, I've got some AS5 coming in the mail now, so before long I'll see if we can get some temperature drops going...

lapped my heat sink, I couldn't believe how uneven it was, it took about an hour.

applied artic silver 5.

I also lapped my processor (ever so gently)

I have never checked the temp, but the fans come on less often, and when they do it is very short lived.

My heat sink was like the one pictured above (green alienware) I just removed the fans 3 screws apiece and went to work.

I found a good way to limit the amout of artic silver was to apply it to the cpu evenly, and then put the heat synk in place and wiggle it.
then remove the heat synk and wipe clean

I would repeat this process until when I removed the heat synk it and the processor only had a thin layer of artic silver on it.

Glad to hear the positive results robjen! I've been meaning to redo mine with AS5 instead of AS3 but the homework is starting to pile on...

Great tips also!

Just be sure to notice the term "VERY GENTLY" when he refers to lapping the cpu die. That's livin' life on the edge

here is something from the arctic silver site:

Important Reminder:
Due to the unique shape and sizes of the particles in Arctic Silver's conductive matrix, it will take a up to 200 hours and several thermal cycles to achieve maximum particle to particle thermal conduction and for the heatsink to CPU interface to reach maximum conductivity. (This period will be longer in a system without a fan on the heatsink or with a low speed fan on the heatsink.) On systems measuring actual internal core temperatures via the CPU's internal diode, the measured temperature will often drop 2C to 5C over this "break-in" period. This break-in will occur during the normal use of the computer as long as the computer is turned off from time to time and the interface is allowed to cool to room temperature. Once the break-in is complete, the computer can be left on if desired.

it sounds like the break in is achieved through heating up and subsequent cool downs when turning the machine on and off. also, 200 hrs would be about 25 days if you were to have the computer on for 8 hours a day.

You don't want a big gob of thermal goo...only enough to fill in the nooks and crannies that the lapping doesn't get. Even w/ 3000 grit paper, you'll have tiny valleys, etc. As to wet/dry, I don't see a problem. IMO, the main reason to go w/ wet sanding is to help lubricate the heatsink so that it doesn't catch as you move it on the paper -- insures a better lapping. But dry is fine as well.

Gartuitous needs to be made sticky bump

Can you use a rubber glove instead of a ziplock bag??

Should work fine. The object is to keep the oils from your skin off of the cpu die so a rubber glove, latex glove, saran wrap, ziplock bag, etc. should do the trick.

wow... talk about the difference it makes! I finally got a tube of arctic silver, and applied it to my computer. Even though I was lazy and used their own directions (rice sized blob , directly on cpu), I can still feel a HUGE difference. Without paste, the fans were ALWAYS on when operating from my lap. With paste, the fans operate less than 50% of the time! It's incredible! Definitely a must for any sager owner...

hey the last 10 pictures in the AS Guide are down!? I think it may be because IE won't let me download them cause i'm only at 24kbps or something.

nevermind, but its crappy that no where was mentioned i was supposed to print in landscape mode :grr:

It's been awhile since I've been around moving and the wife expecting and all. Well after two weeks of the new house the Sager finally got hooked back up. It ran o.k. but it seemed like the fans ran alot more often then they did before. So remembering the Artic Silver guide I decided it was time to do an inspection.

Problem #1. There was a HEAVY coating of cat fur and dust bunnies spread across the fins of the heatsink. Moral: do a yearly or even monthly inspection for dust. Just having clean fan blades isn't enough.

That's good enough reason for me to do some Artic Silver. So, far it's going well on my 8886. But I've noticed the following:

The chrome (nickel) coating on the heat spreader is VERY thin. You won't get the mirror finish like on the 8890?. 2000 grit was sufficient to remove the chrome. Luckily I didn't remove any where the CPU will be contacting the heat spreader.

Something else I noticed is that the heatspreading has layout/positioning lines for the thermal pad, so when you apply the Artic Silver only inside this area. This will save on the overzealous use of paste.

Glad this guide is here.

Beakmyn, I believe the coating is in fact silver, hence the thin layer. Take a look at this interesting page, here is a snippet:There is no worry to lap it away (I did it on my 5660). The AS makes the same job, just better.

FWIW (and IMHO), having a silver plating between the AS and the copper heatsink is one thermal interface too many. I'd sand down to copper and only have between one and two thermal interface boundaries (CPU-Cu and CPU-AS, AS-Cu).

Well I picked up some Artic Silver 5 from FrozenCPU.com (local for me). It's pretty thick stuff and difficult to spread so I used Artic Silver's instructions which actually don't require doing the heat spredder (if I read it right). I went ahead and did it anyway and then the cpu. I then wiped the CPU clean again. Then I put a grain of rice amount on the cpu and put the heatsink back on and gave a few twists to spread the AS and remove an air bubbles.

We'll see how it goes.