How long should I wait for the thermal compound to selttle down before overclocking?

Question

I just built myself a high-end system. It's AMD X2 5600+ with 4GB RAM, Nvidia 8800 GTX video card, and 500 GB HDD.

I had been using a rather cheap (~$25) heatsink until now. I decided to overclock and so I got $75 Zalman CNPS9500 AM2 heat-sink and some artic silver 5.

I put the system together yesterday around 5 and let the burn-in test run for about 3 hours. I was able to overclock the CPU by 7-8%.

My question: how long should I wait before trying to overclock again? I read some place that termal paste takes a while to settle down between the CPU and the heatsink, so that had me wondering.

Answer 1

You could do your overclocking anytime, especially w/ your great and envious HSF. The difference in cooling between fresh and settled AS5 could just be 2 °C. The key to great overclocks is good cooling and your CNPS9500 will do that for you, NOT AS5.

Also do not worry much about damaging anything, especially if you stay within stock voltages. Those who fried their processor, smoked their PSU or toasted parts of their mobo are mostly on the dark side- extreme overclocking/volt modding.

Answer 2

AS5 states the settle in period could take as much as 200 hours and requires several thermal cycles (power the computer down a few times and allow thermal interface to cool).

If I were you, however, I would remove the overclock and make sure your new components are all running okay for a couple weeks before attempting an OC. If a part is faulty and you overclock, you might not me able to RMA.