e6600 Installation Help Needed

[j-Xile]

Is it ok to touch the metal part on the top of the cpu? If not how can I clean it? Do you normally have to press down on the cpu to make it fit or should it go in automatically?

Pantec P180 Case

GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 Motherboard

Antec True Power Trio TP3-550 PSU

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Processor

ZALMAN CNPS 9700 NT CPU Cooler

CORSAIR XMS2 2GB DDR2

ASUS EN7600GS SILENT/HTD/512M GeForce 7600GS 512MB Video Card

Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

[acrobat]

Hello. You shouldn't really tough it. Your skin has oils and swet and stuff on it which you can't even see, but will go on the chip and heat up when the chip gets hot, and could cause it to overheat. Infact... from experience... its almost garaunteed that will happen.

So you really need to clean it.

Its important that whatever you clean it with, does not have bits of dust, because the dust can be just as bad as the oils from your skin. So you need a "lint free cloth". Lint free basically just means no bits of fluff and stuff.

You can probably get away with just using an old T-Shirt or cloth hankey or something similar. Hold the chip carefully from the sides (its important not to touch the gold pins on the bottom of the chip either). Or you could put the chip down on a piece of foam or something (best not to put it on an anti-static bag because they are evidently bad to put stuff on - surprisingly).

Anyway, once you got it flat or are holding it carefully, just run it gently and basically try to buff/polish the surface of the chip. You want it nice and clean and polished like a sports car.

That should do the job. If you did want to clean it properly though, you could do with getting either some "white spirit", "thermal paste cleaner - or TIM cleaner", or pure alcohol, or anything similar to that stuff.

Those are the things people use to remove the thermal paste from a CPU properly, so they would work well to remove a thumb print (even an invisible thumb print).

Ohh also, if you use something like a T-Shirt or whatever, and want to be double sure that there is no bits of dust or fluff left on the chip, you can use a can of compressed air to blow on the chip after you have polished it.

And to answer your last question, I think the CPU should just drop into place by itself without having to press down on it. Atleast mine did, although I have a different motherboard. But it should be the same with yours. If you look very carefully at the CPU, you should see a very small groove cut out of the plastic edge on either side of it. And then if you look at the slot in the motherboard, you should see a little groove sticking in. So basically its like a jigsaw piece that fits in to place - only not very obvious because the little grooves are so hard to see. But you should be able to match it up ok. Also, if there is a manual with your CPU, it should have a little diagram in there - (I think my manual told me another way of figuring out which way the chip goes in to the slot).

Its not hard to figure out anyway. Also, I dont think it clips down into place or anything... That was the scaryest part of building a PC for me - by far. The chip just kind of rested in the slot... and then you close the hatch over it... and then you had to force a little arm down to press it tightly into place. I was worried the arm was going to squash the chip, but it worked fine so that must just be the way it is. The important thing is that you put the chip in the right way round anyway. (And that you make sure its nice and clean).

Good luck

p.s. take your time with it, and also take your time when you put the heatsink and fan on. Those two parts are the hardest part of building a PC. Everything else was dead easy for me, but those 2 parts are a pain. So if you take your time and get that done right, you are all set