thermal sensor problem

[ComicBookGuy]

Hello all,
I have a few problems and questions. I just bought a cool drive 4, and it came with the thermal sensors but no tape. I went all over town looking for some thermal tape but no one has it. I did find thermal pads at CompUSA but it doesn’t say if it’s electro conductive or not, and I found silicon tape (I don’t think I want to use that) and foam tape at radio shack as well as electrical tape. The foam tape said it could withstand temps of 150F. I’ll be going back to radio shack today to see if I missed the thermal tape. I have also found this thermal tape http://www.bestbyte.net/Product.cfm?...thermal%20tape but it’s online meaning it’ll take a little bit for it to get to me to install it.
Will any of the tapes work? or am I doomed to order the thermal tape online?
One more thing, no one really tells where exactly to put the sensors. I have a general idea, the CPU sensor goes behind the Motherboard where the CPU would be and the VGA would go behind the board where its CPU is at, the sensor for the hard drive goes on top of it but I don’t know where the case sensor goes.
Thanks for all your help.

[Cricket]

Originally posted by ComicBookGuy Hello all, I have a few problems and questions. I just bought a cool drive 4, and it came with the thermal sensors but no tape. I went all over town looking for some thermal tape but no one has it. I did find thermal pads at CompUSA but it doesn’t say if it’s electro conductive or not, and I found silicon tape (I don’t think I want to use that) and foam tape at radio shack as well as electrical tape. The foam tape said it could withstand temps of 150F. I’ll be going back to radio shack today to see if I missed the thermal tape. I have also found this thermal tape http://www.bestbyte.net/Product.cfm?...thermal%20tape but it’s online meaning it’ll take a little bit for it to get to me to install it. Will any of the tapes work? or am I doomed to order the thermal tape online?

You don't need thermal tape, just heat resistant tape to hold the thermal probe against the components you're interested in monitoring. You don't even have to put the tape over the probe, you can just tape down the wire...just make sure the probe is making contact with what you're monitoring.

Originally posted by ComicBookGuy One more thing, no one really tells where exactly to put the sensors. I have a general idea, the CPU sensor goes behind the Motherboard where the CPU would be and the VGA would go behind the board where its CPU is at, the sensor for the hard drive goes on top of it but I don’t know where the case sensor goes. Thanks for all your help.

No, you don't install the probe on the back of the motherboard or the video card. You want to get as close to the processor as possible to get an accurate reading. If you can set it up so the probe makes actual contact with the processor, that would be best...but don't put the probe between the processor and the heatsink, that could crack the processor. You can have the probe make contact with the heatsink right above the processor contact point. Or you could have the probe make contact with the side of the processor core (it would fit into the gap between the heatsink and CPU base. For the case temp, you can mount the probe anywhere within the case. Put it at the top of the case...since heat rises, you can see if the heat is being controlled well enough to keep the build up of heat down to a minimum.

Cricket