Dielectric grease and foam gaskets a must with Mach I?

[Thaddy]

Hey there,

I just got my Mach I up and running and was informed that I'm going to need dielectric grease for the socket and a foam gasket to fill up the rear bracket, neither of which came with the Prometeia or CPU kit. I was told that without these two things, it'll take about a week for condensation to build up and kill my CPU and/or motherboard. Is this true?! :eek:

Thanks,
Mike

[Kunaak]

Nope.

11 months with a prometeia, and no die electric grease.
no heatpad either, just full the backplate with foam so it's air tight and seal it well.

never had an issue yet, and I really push my hardware, so I figure if the prometiea was a POS, it would have killed something on it's own by now, but nope.
everything that I've killed, I killed from usual things Vmods and such ;)

[TheDude]

Thaddy,

Please note the difference between the terms..."foam gasket to fill up the rear bracket" and "no heatpad either, just full the backplate with foam so it's air tight and seal it well". People often confuse the heater with the foam back plate pad.

It depends mostly on the PC's environment. I do not use the "heater", but I do use the foam back pad that goes on the reverse side of mobo in cpu area, as Kunaak says and strongly suggest that you do also. I am also a strong advocate of Dielectric grease....I use it on my pins and fill my socket with it, even on regular WC setups.
Most importantly....make sure that you have an airtight seal around evap head and cpu. One tiny leak of air and you will have condensation, which most likely will result in some dead hardware depending on location of the leak.

Seal string is your friend :D

[Thaddy]

Will some normal foam (from a sponge perhaps) do the job? Also, will turning off the heater help my temps? Unfortunately, despite having apparently good contact, my evap says -40 and my NF7-S says 12. What's the deal? I tried both ASIII and Arctic Alumina,

Sorry to hassle you guys so much like a completle newbie, but I am exactly that. :)

[TheDude]

I don't think a sponge is dense enough....email chip-con...they should be able to send you some pretty quick or suggest a retailer near you.
Which heater do you mean? The one in the evap head or the one that some folks have instead of the foam? I wouldn't disable the one in the evap. You should be able to do without the one on the backside of the board as long as you use the foam..that should make it cooler...if you are running it now?
Is that -40c on the Prommie case display? Loaded or idle? I wouldn't put much faith in the mobo temps in the bios on the NF7-S. I would think you should be arond -27 to -30 loaded and around -45c idle on mach1 prom display. Your bios temp for cpu around -10 or 12c..+12c is a bit high. But that depends on which bios you are using also.
Did you check the HS to see if you got a good imprint of the cpu die in the t-paste?

[Thaddy]

Originally posted by TheDude
I don't think a sponge is dense enough....email chip-con...they should be able to send you some pretty quick or suggest a retailer near you.
Which heater do you mean? The one in the evap head or the one that some folks have instead of the foam? I wouldn't disable the one in the evap. You should be able to do without the one on the backside of the board as long as you use the foam..that should make it cooler...if you are running it now?
Is that -40c on the Prommie case display? Loaded or idle? I wouldn't put much faith in the mobo temps in the bios on the NF7-S. I would think you should be arond -27 to -30 loaded and around -45c idle on mach1 prom display. Your bios temp for cpu around -10 or 12c..+12c is a bit high. But that depends on which bios you are using also.
Did you check the HS to see if you got a good imprint of the cpu die in the t-paste?

Hello,

Thanks for the thorough response. :)

To answer your questions... (and of course add some new ones of my own :)).

Would a regular sponge, jammed/compressed into that small bracket, be dense enough? Chip-Con has already been very good to me and I don't want to bite (or nibble :D) the hand that feeds me by asking for something I can get myself.

As I am writing this, the Prometeia's display reads -38 and the CPU temp monitoring program which I used before the Prometeia reports 15C. However, I am also getting a two "mystery" readings in MBM5; -58C and -43C. Since the evaporator is only -38C, and that temperature reading is invariably lower than the actual die, I'm guessing neither of these is the actual die reading. :(

For the sake of testing, I am running my 1700+ at stock voltage and speeds right now (1.5v, 133x11). This NF7-S has been quirky from day one, though, perhaps there is something wrong with it. For one thing, it was in a (sealed) rev 1.2 box, but has a rev 2.0 sticker by the PCI slots, identifies itself as a rev 2 in Sandra and WCPU, and "accepts" the updated rev 2 BIOS's I downloaded from Abit. Furthermore, my Corsair TwinX3200LL, which could do 4-2-2-2@190fsb@2.8v on my A7N8X needs 2.9v to run 11-4-4-2.5@200fsb on this Abit. Something is awry, no? :(

I am almost 100% sure that I have good contact, because I installed the head by holding the head right against the core, installing the screws, and THEN sealing it.

I am using the newest BIOS (BIOS 18, IIRC) for rev 2 boards (even though this was sold and packaged as a rev 1.2).