Which thermal paste to use

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Hi,
I'm going to be upgrading the ram in both sockets on an iMac G4 usb 2.0.
I know the procedure but I'm not sure which thermal paste to buy.
Most seem to be either silver or silicone.
Is there any particular type I should look for?
Thanks
Elma
 
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You don't use thermal paste when upgrading the RAM. You just pop out the old ones and throw in the new ones.
 
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Kash: You have to replace it on the desk lamp style G4s when upgrading the RAM in the internal slot; the CPU "heatsink" is part of the case.

elma: It won't make a *big* difference with the G4, they don't put out much heat. But, if you want to make sure you're getting the best stuff you can get, buy some Arctic Silver 5. It's not that expensive, and it works very well.
 
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Ah sorry, didn't read that it was a G4, just assumed it was an Intel Mac.

+rep to you Geeky

And I second the Arctic Silver 5 recommendation.
 
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Brilliant, artic silver 5 it will be then.
Thanks for that.

edit

Also I will replace the little battery when I'm in there.
Is there anything else you would recommend I do when it is open?
 
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Clean it out; blow the dust out with one of those canned air things or something. And make sure you get all of the old thermal paste off (use rubbing alcohol). I suggest spreading the Arctic Silver with either a bag over your finger or with an expired credit card or something... you can do it with just your bare finger, but it will dye your skin silver for a little while.

If you wanted to spend money you could consider upgrading the hard drive in it-if not because you need the space but because the new drives are much faster than the one that's in it, though I might be concerned about the drive getting too hot. I haven't had a chance to have one of these machines apart and play around with it, so I can't say for sure.
 
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My favorite thermal paste is Zalman ZM-STG1 Super Thermal Grease.

You get more details here. The great thing about ZM-STG1 is that it comes in a "white out bottle" like bottle, complete with the "white out bottle" type applicator. It is the easiest to use thermal grease I have ever worked with. When I need thermal grease (I have built a number of my own PCs in the past) this is the only one I use at this point.
.

thr-28.jpg
 
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That Zalman stuff isn't bad either, I'm sure (though I haven't used it), and it WOULD be a lot easier to put on than the AS5. On a processor like the G4 it really makes very little difference what you use, so long as you use something. I mean, you have to realize, the older G4s (450-466 range) put out so little heat that they can be run without any heatsink of any kind for the amount of time it takes the machine to boot into the OSX desktop. Heck, you can use your finger as a heatsink and it'll only get uncomfortable to touch the CPU core after sitting at the desktop for 10-20 seconds.

When you're dealing with a CPU that puts out 60, 70, 90, even 150w of heat, the lower thermal resistance of something like the AS5 can make a big difference. When you're talking about a CPU that's pushing 15-20w at MOST, it makes very little difference.
 
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elma
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Wrt to upgrading the HD.
I did consider this,
I wouldn't need more space as I store all data externally, but faster would be good because all my apps are on the internal hard drive.

Anyone done that before?
I'm off to look at prices and if it's reasonable I'll go for it, but under advice.
 
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I haven't done it, but I know it's been done. You need to stay with drives smaller than 128GB (which is getting difficult these days); the machine can't properly use anything larger.

You want a 7200rpm drive, ideally with 8MB or more of cache... Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and Hitachi are all decent choices. I'd be mildly concerned about how hot the drive will get in there; it may not be a problem but desktop drives need to stay <= ~50*C usually; ideal for me is about 40*C or lower.

I'd almost consider putting a laptop drive in it with an adapter, but that may not just be a drop in thing, and it'd certainly be more expensive. I'll do some poking around when I have a minute and see what I can come up with.
 
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elma: Is this the 1.25 G4 that's in your profile?
 
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elma
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elma: Is this the 1.25 G4 that's in your profile?

It is indeed.
Full specs are
iMac G4 17" 1.25GHz
512Mb Ram
80Gb Hard drive
Leapord 10.5.2
Airport
No Bluetooth

Think thats covered it

I had a macbook, but as you've probably read it turned into a bit of a nightmare so I'm giving the G4 a tune up with the money instead and reverting to a pc laptop for now. Reason being I must have a windows Laptop with bluetooth for work, the software I use is available for mac but the mac versions are very limited by comparison. I'll re macbook myself later but I have to calm down first.
 
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Oh. My mistake, I figured it was an older one. You won't see as much of a bump in transfer rates (and thus decrease in program load times) by going to a newer hard drive as you would in an older machine. The drive that's in there is already a 7200RPM drive.

However, based on the age of the system I doubt it will hit much more than 45MB/s. A newer, smaller capacity drive like an 80 or a 120 or something might manage to hit 50-55; which is a significant but not earth-shattering difference. But, if someone can confirm that that machine will take >128GB drives, I'd look at a Seagate Barracuda 10 320GB/7200RPM/16MB cache drive (couldn't find a UK computer parts website...). That thing should come close to 70MB/s in the right conditions. And 40-45ish to 70MB/s is very significant. I'm gonna pm someone and ask them to poke their head in because I don't honestly know if that machine will handle large drives or not.

I assume you're going to max out the RAM at 1 gig?
 
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elma
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Thanks, really appreciate that.
I'm not really bothered about space more the speed,
I don't store files on the internal hard drive anyway just my applications.
I know it's a slightly slower way to do things but I use multiple machines and it's hard to keep everything current when you use more than 1 computer.

I'm actually going to try and put 2Gb ram in, apparently it will support 2Gb fine.
I know apple said 1Gb but it seems that ram technology moved on and apples guide has not. If it goes wrong though I'll revert to 1Gb.
I'm only going to upgrade the user socket to begin with so I can avoid taking it apart twice if it isn't happy with 1Gb cards.
 
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Even though Apple's site says one thing, it is based off the current technology of THAT time. Like, the previous Mac Pros, they said they only take 16gb of ram, but if you were to put in 8 4gb sticks it would recognize the full 32gb just fine, it's just that 4gb sticks weren't readily available at the time of the guide making.
 

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