Cooling question(s)

[rich998]

My first question:
I've got a Volcano 12 h/s and fan. The set up suggests 3 ways to set it up:
a) full on all the time
b) manually adjustable with front or rear switch
c) Auto from a sensor stuck on the bottom of the AMD 3200 CPU

Which is the best way of doing it. I would try the auto method but could this be reliable enough?

My second question:
Using arctic silver 5 is it only the CPU core that the Arctic Silver is put on to or also the bottom of the h/s?

Please excuse my stupidity (again!)

 

[Big B]

I'd do A or B. With B that'd give you the most flexibility. If it's too loud for you, you can always turn it down some and get solid cooling. From what I've read the auto sensing fans aren't all that great as they seem.

For the Arctic Silver, you only want to apply a small thin coat of it on the core only. While most good heatsinks have a good lapping job, there are still micro gaps that can't be lapped out. (Lapping is using sandpaper to smooth out the bottom of the heatsink--but it's not necessary unless you are an absolute freak about your temps)
You really need just a little dab and then just smooth it out.

 

[Baddass]

Hi, im a new addition to the forums, been referred here by one of the mods :)

you can find a guide to applying AS5 here which should help

i would def go for option B too, then u can control the fan speed (and therefore noise) depending on how hot the cpu is running and things like that

hth