I disassembled a cube power supply (AAB.... P/N 983) to clean it.
When opening it up, I noticed that there was thermal paste between the top and the bottom parts of the power supply enclosure.
I therefore cleaned off the existing paste and applied new Arctic Silver 5 paste to the two parts. This paste is meant for CPUs but I figure if it is good enough to provide a thermal interface between a CPU and a heat sink, it will be more than good enough for this power supply.
The instructions for applying this paste to CPUs say clean up the CPU & the heat sink, "tint" the heat sink and the CPU with the paste (i.e. spread a thin layer of paste to both), then apply a line of paste to the tinted CPU and press the two together. Since the surface area here is much larger that in the case of a CPU, I had just enough paste to "tint" both parts, and then I ran out.
Questions:
- has anyone ever tried to re-apply thermal paste to this power supply?
- do you anticipate any issues with this particular paste?
- or with the fact that I only applied a layer of paste to both surfaces, without a further line of paste?
- how do I sensibly test if the paste is effective and that the supply is not overheating / is not going to overheat?
I think you'll be fine. That arctic silver is going to be -way- better than the stuff they used originally. Further if you're like most of us you're probably only utilizing < 50% of the max load on that power supply. As I recall the top case screws directly into the heatsink, and you'll only need enough paste to fill any micro air gaps.
I used arctic silver on mine and it's been fine for over a year. I would say I spread a layer ~1mm thick.
--
Brian
I just use a tube of dielectric grease and when I bolt the part down any excess is forced out. Arctic silver is WAY too expensive for me to be using on items other then CPU's or GPU's.