Upgrade Processor: Thermal Paste required? (1 Viewer)

[Phil L]

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]

Under normal circumstances, the thermal wax material under the retail heatsink should suffice. If you plan on Overclocking or doing some odd things with the computer, then you may want to get some higher performance thermal paste such as Arctic Silver.

 

[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.