Areweeffingserious
While we're on the subject, my AMD processor doesn't have any thermal paste applied, and seemingly operates fine. Is there technology that allows my CPU and heat sink to work with each other, should I apply some? Recently I opened an older PC for a good cleaning, and after cleaning the fans heat sink, I discovered white goo on the CPU. I removed the goo to see the manufacturer and GHz. (Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz)
Anyways, should I not turn this computer back on until I buy and apply some thermal paste? What kind? What brand?
Thermal paste exists in order to fill imperfections in the metal of both the heatspreader of the processor and the base of the heatsink.
Metal is a very good conductor of heat. Air is far less efficient. Imperfections in metal mean that all of the metal of the heatspreader isn't making contact with all of the metal of the heatsink which causes pockets of air. The idea of thermal paste is that it is a solid material that fills the imperfections in the metal in order to improve thermal conductivity (relative to air). Direct metal-metal contact is ideal, but most people are not going to lap or solder their heatsink to their heatspreader.
So is there anything wrong with running without paste? It depends. In some cases you may only see a few degree celsius temperature increase. In other cases you could see much higher increases. It all depends on the design and imperfections of your heatsink and whether your processor can tolerate those increases in temperature. If you want you can boot it into the OS or even just the BIOS and monitor the processor temperature, although the safest route would be to just apply paste. Even the cheapest paste is generally going to be better than none.
