[stormy]

As the topic states, I was just wondering if anyone has tried putting Arctic silver between the CPU/heatsinks GPU/heatsinks.. regardless off sgi model. 

Surely replacing old crusty thermal paste might be a good idea...

[Raion]

The majority of the systems use thermal pads or adhesive, so plain old paste doesn't work. Yours truly destroyed his O2 300MHz R12k that way

[stormy]

Ohhhh, so they might be designed with the thickness of a thermal pad in mind... I see. Not enough pressure to make proper contact with paste etc.

[Jacques]

<p>

Ohhhh, so they might be designed with the thickness of a thermal pad in mind... I see. Not enough pressure to make proper contact with paste etc.

Correct, if you take the sinks off lots of them have a rubber or mesh lined sponge type seal around the edge. They can only compress so much before they leave a little gap between the cpu and heat sink. When I did my O2 mod&nbsp;I bought some thermal pad, can’t remember the thickness but it was around 0.6mm.

The heatspreaders and heatsinks aren’t exactly mirror finish flat either so pads help take up any irregularities.