I upgraded my PC to an Intel Core 2 Quad last night. The Q6600 G0 to be exact.

After removing the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro heatsink, I used some Akasa TIM-Clean to clean off the old thermal interface material from both the bottom of the heatsink and my old CPU.

I applied a thin layer of Arctic Silver 5 to the heatspreader on the Q6600, slotted the chip into the CPU socket, and re-attached my heatsink.

While I was fiddling around in the PC, I used a can of compressed air to clean out the fins on the heatsink and removed as much dust from the inside of my PC as I could. In the process, I managed to stab the tip of my finger with the R in the GeForce logo on my graphics card. That thing is damn sharp!

Now that my PC is up and running again, I have to burn-in the chip and arctic silver compound. That should take a few days, but once it’s done I can start overclocking again.