P5WDH Phase change - dielectric grease a must [corrosion]

[eva2000]

After my 12 day run with E6700/Asus P5W DH on Kayl Black Frozen SS http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=115040 I decided to leave unit off overnight and next day unmount the evap and see how things are underneath. Motherboard was dry under the insulation, a bit damp like on top of the sticky back foam pictured below



Other than that everything looked fine. Removed insulation and plucked out the cpu and noticed these brown marks on back of cpu's gold contacts. Looks like a bit of corrosion, or something ?

Brown marks shown in below pictures mainly at

(click image for larger version)


top left side from
4th contact on top row
3rd to 5th contact on 2nd row from top
5th contact on 3rd row from top

bottom right side from
7th contact from right side on bottom row
7th and 8th contact from right side on 2nd row from bottom row
7th contact from right side on 3rd row from bottom row
7th contact from right side on 4th row from bottom row

The location of the brown marks on these contacts correspond nearly the same to where the below pics show that the motherboard LGA pins have from the naked eye misaligned or the pin arrays are slightly darker in those pics than the rest. But the photos show they're lined up somewhat better i.e. here and here and here ?

Pictures 2, 4, 5, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 at http://fileshosts.com/intel/Asus/P5W...rks/index.html illustrate it best.

http://fileshosts.com/intel/Asus/P5W.../photos/2.html

http://fileshosts.com/intel/Asus/P5W.../photos/4.html

http://fileshosts.com/intel/Asus/P5W.../photos/5.html

http://fileshosts.com/intel/Asus/P5W...photos/11.html

http://fileshosts.com/intel/Asus/P5W...photos/13.html

http://fileshosts.com/intel/Asus/P5W...photos/14.html

http://fileshosts.com/intel/Asus/P5W...photos/15.html

http://fileshosts.com/intel/Asus/P5W...photos/16.html

http://fileshosts.com/intel/Asus/P5W...photos/17.html

The centre is covered in nail polish and dielectric grease which I have since cleaned off.

Both E6700 and P5W DH pictured above still work fine as i tested them both without problems. So was I lucky to catch this early before something bad could have happened ? Should i even bother cleaning off the cpu's gold contacts' corrosion ? And if i clean them how should i go about it ?

Guess there's a lession to be learnt, insulating LGA775 sockets is hard to do so using dielectric grease in all of the LGA775 cpu socket covering pins and all is probably a good idea for long term runs on sub zero cooling! I only used dielectric grease in the inner square socket but not on the LGA775 pins in the motherboard :o

For now plucked E6700 into one of my Intel D975XBX Badaxe boards for more extensive testing to ensure cpu is fine. So will have some E6700 + D975XBX Badaxe benchies later I hope