Neo,
try to push it and see how hot it would go.....I do the thermal paste thing on a daily basis and discovered that...(I repair macs...)
if I do the thermal paste evenly on both surface (heatsink and logic board), they DO NOT touch each other...whether is 15 or 17, coreduo, c2duo, SR, or penryn, the heatsink does not touch the mating surfaces...
I will try to dig up some pictures to show you....
I tried the zalman brush, artic silver, toothpaste, everthing you can think of for thermal paste....it is the apple stuff and the apple method works the best in my experience
I think when you're a certified technician working for Apple, you have to use the components as specified right? Out of the box/packaging without user modification, cause those are rules your bound to work with.
You might be a certified technician but I used to build OEM servers for a living, up until about ten years ago. I spent alot of time tweaking hardware for improved thermodynamics too, thus better reliability. When I started using Macs for professional work in sub-tropical environments where the room temperature is already approaching 40°C, many of them crashed all due to over heating, slow fan response rates and bad thermal conductivity. It took me a while to perfect the applications of paste on MacBooks But I'm fairly confident with what I do, when i do it.
Anyway, I as a end user, don't need to comply to Apple's rules, it's ok for me to remove the heat-pipe, flex it a little, make sure everything is conductive prior to greasing the components, then reassemble the system. So far, I've modified about fifteen of Apple's machines and near all of them have had a great life without been over-cooked.
Here's a screen grab. On top of Firefox, iChat, iTunes I've opened a few more applications:-
MacTheRipper is tryng to rip a some what scratched DVD,
Adobe Photoshop CS4 doing something with effect filters on a sizable image,
LightRoom 2.2 sitting idle in the background
and
Adobe Premiere CS4 is processing video for 1080i HD output.
All in all, forcing the machine to work harder!!
I was thinking that too... he should pull it off to see the coverage area with the new paste. Of course it would mean that Neo would have to clean and re-apply.
Oh, I know the heat-pipe is making good contact, I've pasted-it up and bolted it to the logicboard prior to mounting.
Took a while cause so many wiry things still sticking up, getting in the way! lol
