how much damage can you cause by not applying thermal paste?

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dafydd_brown

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Having just spent a fair amount of money I'm not intending on doing anything stupid... Even though I do that unintentionally all the time... But anyway.... I was just wondering if not applying thermal paste would be really really stupid. (I do intend on applying it... honestly...)
Is there much difference (besides the obvious) between paste and tape? I'm sure I read about thermal tape somewhere...
I've got the processor and motherboard but forgot to buy any thermal paste... I guess I'll have to wait a few more days...
 
well the purpose of thermal pads or paste is to help disapate (i cant spell bleh) heat well. If you dont put either on then as long as you can monitor your cpu temp make sure it doesnt over heat your fine.
 
same goes for the thermal pads, there not as good but they do the job. If you overclock then you may want to think about paste
 
thresh, there is an edit button below your name in every post you may want to use it to avoid clutter... :)

and technically you can run with no thermal paste but it is obviously highly dangerous... i would suggest just waiting no use in ruining your cpu just for that... if you live near any sort of computer store you may be able to buy it there, or ask the owner or other techie sorta people if they have any extra just laying around... but dont start without it i suggest
 
Yeah, you are playing with fire (no pun inteded) :) if you don't use thermal paste. You might be ok if you get a really well made heatsink that doesn't leave much gaps between the diode and the heatsink itself. The problem is there are microscopic ridges in most heatsinks that will cause a gap and will keep the heat from being transferred correctly. The point of the paste is to close those gaps so there is a tight seal between the two. I guess you could try it but i wouldn't recommend it, just wait.
 
There was a thread in here two days ago guys that answers this question...the guy didn't apply any grease and his temp immediately shot to 85C and kept climbing...luckily for him he either shut off his computer or it shut itself off I can't remember, but my computer shuts off if it hits 65C but it never gets within 20C of that anyway.....so basically NO you can't run it without the grease unless you have maybe a water cooling setup would do better but still, both surfaces of the CPU Core and heatsink would have to be 'FLAT' and I'm not talking just lapping it...I'm talking perfectly flat..on the quantum beyond microscopic level....which basically doesn't exist....so until that day comes we're still using grease.

I saw this thing where toothepaste actually dissipated heat better than AS5...but it only last for a few mins obviously :p cause it dries up, but still an interesting though no?
 
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