AMD guys.. is this normal?

Most of the heat is in the center from what I understand. When I apply my thermal paste, I only put one small dab about the size of a grain of rice, directly in the center of the die. After taking it off down the road, I see that the paste only spread to about the size of a fingerprint -- and the CPU had run pretty cool over its life.

Ya it looks right the covering on the cpu that's shown at the end is the heat spreader.

That contact patch does look a little small tho.

Yeah you definitely don't want to use a gallon of thermal paste
You want enough to cover the contact area with as thin of a layer as is possible

I've never used a heatsink that didn't make contact with the whole die surface though.. it doesn't seem right to me, but if they boxed it with the cpu I guess it'll work..


Then other thing is that when you lock it down to the board, there's 1/4 inch of play there ... and it can end up going to either side while you're locking it down .. so not only does it not make contact with the whole surface, but then there's that

If I keep this thing I'll definitely get something more reasonable for cooling... Like say an all copper Zalman 9700. It's a good thing I bought the low profile ram

it's okay, but the cooler the better, so think about investing $20 on newegg and getting a better heatsink.