Northbridge Cooler

I pulled this cooler off a dead Dell P4 motherboard.


If you look close, you can see that the pad uses some kind of mesh.


First, I used ArtiClean only on the right side. As you can see it removed a good amount of the pad, but not all. Just apply ArctiClean again, this time on the whole pad.


Looks like we're getting there.


After three applications of ArctiClean 1 and one application of ArctiClean 2, the heatsink looks like this. Impressive.

Burn-In Test

After all these great results, I wanted to find out where the limits of ArctiClean are.


I took this slab of copper and put different thermal paste on it.
From left to right: Silicone paste, Arctic Silver Ceramique, Arctic Silver 3.

Now the copper was "burnt-in" at 250°C for about an hour.


Even after using ArctiClean, which does a great job at getting the dried thermal paste off, the oxidation on the copper is still there.
Arctic Silver does not say that ArctiClean can remove oxidation, so this result is fine, I still had to try.


After lapping with 400 grit sandpaper, all oxidation is gone - because some copper is gone. Now is an ideal time to apply ArctiClean 2 to prevent new corrosion to form.