[ale] Ubuntu 15.10

[Alex Carver]

The secret methods to use thermal paste as told from someone who has
used several pounds over the years in a laboratory setting on various
bits of equipment valued over $1 million:

0: Wear gloves for this process because skin oil is your enemy.

1: Get high quality silver colloid paste[A].  It's not too expensive but
it has high thermal conductivity.  For the lab I used to get it from
Williams Advanced Materials which is now owned by Materion.  The new
compound name is Thermotech TE Vaccum Paste.  It's meant to keep
sputtering targets cool that routinely see over 2kW of energy pumped
into them resulting in several hundred watts of heat all in a vacuum
chamber which means no convection (it all goes through a water cooled
heatsink).

2: Get a new, stiff putty knife from the hardware store.  It needs to be
very stiff, not one that can flex easily.

3: Clean all surfaces very well, including the putty knife, with lint
free cloth and a triad of acetone, isopropanol, and ethanol or, in a
pinch, just use high purity isopropanol (93% or better).

4: Apply a small dab of the paste (about the size of an apple seed) to
either the chip or the heatsink with the corner of the putty knife.  You
don't need much and you certainly don't want to "butter" the heatsink.

5: Scrape the putty knife flat across the surface that has the paste.
You will end up removing a fair amount of paste in the process and what
is left will be a very thin sheen.  This is all you need, resist the
urge to put more.

6:  Carefully align the two parts and press them together lightly
without twisting or rocking.  Then clamp in place.

After that you will have an air-free, ultra flat surface between the two
parts and maximum thermal conduction.  However, this only works with
really good paste.  The cheap stuff from a computer store doesn't work
as well nor does it stay plastic.  The white paste is even worse.  It's
good for large power transistors but not for this type of application.


A:  An alternative to silver colloid paste is indium foil.  You can buy
very thin sheets of foil (about the gauge of household aluminum foil)
from several vendors (ESPI Metals is one I usually use).  Indium is a
very soft metal, it flows when compressed.  You would cut a square to
fit the chip package, clean everything very well with lint-free cloth
and isopropanol and then tightly clamp the heat sink to the chip with
the foil in between.

On 2015-11-12 13:26, Wolf Halton wrote:
> Good point.
> It appears to be a common complaint that there is too much, or not enough
> thermal paste.  That is cheaper than a fan, I reckon.  I may even have a
> bit of it about the lab.
> 
> Wolf Halton
> Mobile/Text 678-687-6104
> --
> Expand Your Vision = Enhance Your Impact
> Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
> <http://atlantacloudtech.com/painless-disaster-recovery/> -
> http://atlantacloudtech.com/painless-disaster-recovery/
> cloudtech.com/disaster-recovery
> 
> 
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 6:58 PM, Boris Borisov <bugyatl at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Or thermal paste is not dried out ...
>> On Nov 10, 2015 10:12 PM, "Wolf Halton" <wolf.halton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I just discovered that my video card is running at about 130 degrees
>>> Celsius, which is about 30% hotter than max suggested by nvidia. I got it
>>> used, from a tech recycler, so its history may include inadvertent rough
>>> handling that might be a contributing factor in this case. Guess I ought to
>>> check if its cooling fan is running at all.
>>>
>>> Wolf Halton
>>> Atlanta Cloud Technology
>>> Cybersecurity & Disaster Recovery Solutions
>>> Mobile/Text 678-687-6104
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sent from my iPhone. Creative word completion courtesy of Apple, Inc.
>>>
>>> On Nov 8, 2015, at 5:49 PM, Wolf Halton <wolf.halton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I certainly understand a lack of interest in Beta and NonLTS. I am
>>> addicted to the bleeding edge.  I have Fedora 23 beta on a VM from a couple
>>> of months ago. I installed it to see the 4.x kernel in action. Works pretty
>>> well. Ubuntu 15.10 worked fine in a VM.
>>>
>>> Wolf Halton
>>> Atlanta Cloud Technology
>>> Cybersecurity & Disaster Recovery Solutions
>>> Mobile/Text 678-687-6104
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sent from my iPhone. Creative word completion courtesy of Apple, Inc.
>>>
>>> On Nov 8, 2015, at 12:04 PM, Jim Lynch <ale_nospam at fayettedigital.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I agree.  If I just "have to" have something cutting edge, I'll get a
>>> copy of Fedora.  That hasn't happened in some years now.
>>>
>>> On 11/08/2015 09:19 AM, DJ-Pfulio wrote:
>>>
>>> 15.04 support ends in 2 months.
>>>
>>> 15.10 support ends in June.
>>>
>>>
>>> Non-LTS releases aren't worth my time.