Will these thermal pads do the job?

[SteveLastics]

One of the heat-sinks on my motherboard has come lose.

Will these pads be OK to use?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/thermal-adhesive-tape-a18hh

(was also going to use these on the north/south bridge between the chip and the heat-sink)

[76561198135154379]

A quick Amazon search of thermal pads seems to say they work fine. Almost everyone uses paste/grease though.

[Fluffy]

if it has a retention system use thermal grease if it doesnt have clips get some thermal adhesive such as arctic silver thermal ADHESIVE.... the thermal pads would work but they provide very poor heat transfer which could be a big issue on the northbridge

[Azza ☠]

Thermal paste/grease beats tape hands down, as it gets into micro-gaps.

Ensure to use isopropyl alcohol 75% or higher to clean first off the existing with a non-lint cloth. You can get medical pads already preped with isopropyl alcohol, which tend to do the trick easily.

However, if you are not planning in overclocking, etc - then pads/tape are a quicker and easier to manage. They still transfer most of the heat across. More commonly used on GPU (graphic card) heatsinks.

[Fluffy]

be careful with this one it depends on the chipset you are referring to if i put thermal pads on my northbridge (18w northbride) it would overheat faster than you can imagine but my southbride wouldnt be a big deal.. also they dont use thermal pads on gpu's chipsets anymore at all just on the vrm contacts to the heatsink

[SteveLastics]

This is my motherboard and the heatsinks i was going to use the pads on.

http://postimg.org/image/h3ctkcohr/

Thanks for your help...

[Fluffy]

yeah defenitely not on the northbridge (big fat one) but you prolly could on the long skinny one (vrm) i have the 970 chipset (as do you) and it runs hot.. they both have clips so i would use thermal grease on both as both produce substancial heat.. If you have an fx-cpu the vrms get quite hot
Edit: when you say loose do you mean they move but dont lift off its normal for those heatsinks to move around if they have factory thermal grease but they should be secured with the pins/clips to not lift off the board.. mine do wiggle a bit as well but are secured by pins

[SteveLastics]

Thanks for the reply Fluffy, will it be OK to use thermal grease on all 3?

[Fluffy]

yes BUT on the vrm heatsink make sure the thermal paste/grease does not make contact with the silver pins (vrms are little black squares with silver pins soldered to mobo) so use very very little per black part of vrm (each)... The silver pins conduct so avoid. You can also buy non-conductive thermal grease

[SteveLastics]

Thanks Fluffy, going to get some of this in the morning.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/coolermaster-ic-essential-e1-thermal-compound-paste-n01qr

Also says it's Electrically Non-Conductive

[Fluffy]

yes that will work perfect as it is designed for all ic chips.. good luck

[_I_]

even if it does contact the pins it will not hurt
thermal paste does not conduct, in fact is slightly capacitive (resistant to conducting and able to store a small charge)

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Thermal Pad is ok for the VRM heatsinks; but for the NB/SB types those should be thermal paste. All of the heatsinks should have retention clips or spring-tension-push-pins that snap into place. You don't want thermal pads if it did not originally have this under the heatsink; cause that will make it end-result thicker and thus apply more tension on the push pins or whatever the mount method is.

[Fluffy]

thermal paste does conduct especially those silver based as silver is an excellent electric conductor.... capacitance by defenition is the ability to collect and hold an electric charge they also conduct in ms based time intervals.. capacitive reactance is a different story. Electricity is my field of study and where i now work.. why do you think they have non -conductive thermal grease??

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Just avoid Arctic Silver pastes.
Use ones like Arctic Cooling MX4 or Antec Diamond 7