Thermal Paste ........... Is it really necessary ?

[CorCentral]

It's just that I've heard some people don't use it .

Was wondering if it was a necessity on the 1000 T-bird ?

 

[Valvoline6]

Not when you have a freshly chewed piece of Wriggley's Polar Ice handy!

If I were you I'd use thermal paste. Why do you not want to use it?

 

[CorCentral]

No , from what I've read I will use it ......... I was just asking why some people don't use it ?

 

[SandmanC4]

I believe it is needed to assure there isn't any airgaps between the CPU and the heat sink surface.

 

[Daniel]

I've always used it on everything I've built, a buddy of mine just got a 750 tbird system from mwave, temps were normal, then he pulled off the hs/fan and there was no thermal grease, very odd, what struck me so weird was that it was fine though.

 

[Dundain]

Daniel: I just got a system from mwave.com too, they have no clue how to apply thermal paste. My system was running at over 130 in the BIOS screen with their paste on...so I scrapped it off, put on some Radioshack crap, and it runs at 100 normal in Windows. (No extra fans in the case, and Mwave's little heatsink/fan combo)

 

[SlickVic]

SandmanC4 is correct...and it also has thermal conductivity...I use Arctic Silver...It's much better than silicone based and has MUCH higher thermal conductivity.

Thermal pads work OK, but I would not run with nothing between...you might be OK, but the HS/Core better be close to perfectly flat or your asking for trouble, IMHO.

 

[DaddyG]

Nothing between the hsf and core would DEFINITELY NOT be OK. !gig BIRDS burn up so fast you wouldn't even get a temp alert. Don't even think about not using a high quality thermal compound.

 

[spamboy]

Daddy G is right, those suckers will fry before you get through the POST if your heatsink is not mounted properly, which means using some sort of thermal tranfer, whether the factory tape, thermal paste, or Artic Silver.

 

[DarkMajiq]

AMD actually recommends using a thermal pad rather than thermal paste, but I think that's more to do with issues of cracking processors and such (easier to break the core with just grease than a thermal pad I think), not to do with which gives lower temperatures.

 

[marooned]

uh well let me tell you a story about not using thermal paste lol. I didn't use any to test whether my L1 mod worked so I just fastened the hs to the cpu and booted up..... it only took 10 seconds! and poof gone, my cpu was a dead cooked turkey. Luckily I'm clever and moved the warranty if void sticker to the L1 bridges LOL and covered up the traces that I had covered in rear window defogger crap. I took it back and was so lucky to have gotten a new one. Moral of the story, don't ever not put anything between your cpu and hs... if you have to, use the pad.

 

[JimMc]

<<Luckily I'm clever and moved the warranty if void sticker to the L1 bridges LOL >>

Did you have an opportunity to shoplift anything while they weren't watching? Getting away with the CPU is &quot;nice&quot;, really would have been sweet had you been able to stuff your pockets full of stuff....

 

[Crashedout]

On my duron 700 the thermal paste only covered half the core, resulting in crashes. I re-applied and my temps are down 5 degrees C under full load. Seems to make a difference here.

 

[gtd2000]

Well another opinion for ya here.

I installed my Duron 700 last night with a CoolerMaster heatsink and fan and could get to 933Mhz using 1.85v with my KT7A motherboard.
After trying in vain to play CS after running loads of 3DMark2000 benchmarks (without problem) I went back to the standard 700Mhz setting.

Then tonight I thought lets take that thermal pad off and see how she goes...Well there is the most tiny scraping of thermal pad/gunge left on the CPU and guess what - I'm running now at 7.5 x 133FSB (1000Mhz)using 1.75V and it's totally stable - well so far...lol.....present temperature is 46C.

I'm impressed so far.