Do PC's without CPU coolers need thermal paste?

[Dylan Becker]

...

[Air]

Firstly, you will always need to have a CPU cooler unless you underclock a CPU with a very low TDP.
With that out of the way, thermal paste is simply used to transfer heat from a processor to a heat sink or water block; On it's own, it will do absolutely nothing.

[Azza ☠]

Reword that question:

Do PC's without CPU coolers work for a very long time before turning to toast?

I guess it comes down to your definition of CPU Cooler, you might be meaning liquid coolers, etc? However, all CPUs should have a cooling system of some kind on it, even if it's just a little fan on top of a small heatsink. All should use thermal paste to improve that contact between the heatsink and CPU.

The thermal paste helps remove air pockets/gaps inbetween the CPU and heatsink... if they are left there, what happens is it heats up the air which can't escape and also loses full contact inbetween... therefore way more heat or even frying of the CPU.

Thermal paste is a very high heat conductive paste that is used between two objects (usually a heatsink and a CPU/GPU) to get better heat conduction. It fills in all those microscopic imperfections on the heatsink and CPU/GPU that can trap air in them and cause a loss in the heatsink’s performance. Air is a very poor conductor of heat. Thermal Interface Materials (TIM) can be up to a 100 times greater conductor of heat than air.

However, thermal paste is not near as good of a conductor as copper. Thus, too much thermal paste could hinder a heatsink’s ability to cool properly as well.

Therefore you don't just mear it all on, rather depending on the CPU type, you draw a line of it down between the CPU cores and then press the heat sink on rotating it slightly left and right before locking into position. This flattens the thermal paste into a very fine oval without any air bubbles, also directing the heatflow correct from all cores.

Suggest: Arctic Silver 5

[SilentHorizon]

There is no such thing, without a cpu cooler the cpu will overheat in an instant. So with or without thermal paste won't change that at all.

[Dylan Becker]

Yeah, I found out cpus come with stock heatsink/coolers. The stock ones come with gel pre-applied, correct?

[Mattio]

A lot do come with thermal paste already applied, Intels stock sink does & it's not too bad stuff either but I personally use Arctic Silver.

[shiel]

Цитата допису Mattio:

A lot do come with thermal paste already applied, Intels stock sink does & it's not too bad stuff either but I personally use Arctic Silver.

lol I accidently put my thumb on the pre applied paste on my stock cooler. Thank God I had some 99% isopropyl alcohol and aarctic mx-4 handy!

[SilentHorizon]

Цитата допису Dylan Becker:

Yeah, I found out cpus come with stock heatsink/coolers. The stock ones come with gel pre-applied, correct?

Even coolers like corsairs h80 and h100i come with pre applied paste. However, if your doing intensive overclocking, I advices buying descrete thermal paste to help keep temps down.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You will always need some paste between the CPU & Heatsink.
Same for other heatsinks. As for VRM Heatsinks; those usually have heat-padding on them, which is fine too, just not meant for use between CPU/GPU and heatsink.

Motherboard chipsets also usually have a small amount of thermal paste between that chip and the heatsink too. As you don't want a bare metal heatsink attached to a chip without paste. The point of the paste is to create an area better suited for heat-transfer. And to help fill gaps where u may have imperfect surface propcessing. As not all surfaces of a chip or heatsink will be 100% perfectly flat without micro-imperfections.

Always best to just remove whatever came pre-applied (as it's usually cheap quality) and use your own; like Arctic Silver 5 or Arctic Cooling MX4.

Use Isopropyl Alcohol for removal/cleaning (or Eye-Glass Cleaner)

[_I_]

most of the old cpus (pre pentium)
ex. 386-486 and earlier did not need heatsinks or thermal paste

most pentium and later do
all current cpus need heatsinks and a tim of some kind