Phil L

Upgrade Processor: Thermal Paste required?

I'm going to upgrade my athalon XP processor with a faster one.

I'll buy the retail version so it'll come with a fan and heatsink.

Do I need thermal paste?

SethH

Shouldn't. When I bought a new Athalon (about a year ago) I bought the one with the heatsink in the same package. The heatsink has a little sticker-thing on it that you take off right before installation. Under that sticker there is already some thermal paste. Now, if you decided to go with a different heatsink, or if your's doesn't have any already on it, you HAVE to get some. According to AMD their processor will burn and die in a matter of seconds if it has no heatsink or if the heatsink is installed incorrectly. If I remember correctly Tom's Hardware actually installed one without a heatsink just for giggles and the thing actually caught on fire. I'm pretty sure there's a video of it on www.tomshardware.com.

NickSo

JamesP

I'm a big fan of using better thermal transfer goob then the stock slab of wax that comes on the stock cooler. Even if you are only running at stock speed, a good thermal transfer material will cool your CPU a couple of degrees.

Tekara

I agree with James, using something better than the pink bubblegum on the default heatsink will only do you good. Especially considering that the stock heatsink isn't a very good cooler to begin with.

"Computers are a lot like air conditioners - they both work great until you open windows." -Anonymous
"The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will agree to meet them halfway." -Bernard Avishai