Thermal Paste Already On Heat Sink

Laird thermal paste image source.

Thermal paste already on heat sink.

If you see areas of gray looking material on a copper plate the thermal paste has already been applied. Thermal paste is a paste that contains either silicone and zinc oxide the cheaper versions or silver ceramic the more expensive ones. A good match between cooler and paste can achieve more than just blindly choosing an expensive thermal compound. This provides much better heat transfer to the heat sink.

Sometimes you actually don t need to apply thermal paste if you bought a cpu heat sink combo. A good heat sink can be crippled by a mismatched thermal compound. It s really easy to spot too. Because it is a thick liquid it will fill in all the gaps on the component and the bottom of the heatsink.

Thermal paste also called thermal compound thermal grease thermal interface material tim thermal gel heat paste heat sink compound heat sink paste or cpu grease is a thermally conductive but usually electrically insulating chemical compound which is commonly used as an interface between heat sinks and heat sources such as high power semiconductor devices. A layer of thermal paste or thermal grease will form a complete coating over the top of the component. Top comment no mess no fuss got the job done the thermal paste works as it should it was the only one bestbuy near me sold a bit more than i wanted to spend on paste but it does the trick doing maintenance on computer worked great after removing cooling fan and cleaning fan motor heat sink i applied the thermal paste and used the center drop method the compound was the proper. If you are looking for a thermal paste specifically for your graphics processor or graphics card you must go for gelid gc extreme thermal paste.

Some heat sinks will actually come with thermal paste already applied in this case. This is the part of the cpu that is still exposed after being installed in a motherboard and is the surface to which you apply thermal paste. Arctic mx 4 8 grams thermal compound paste carbon based high performance heatsink paste thermal compound cpu for all coolers thermal interface material 4 8 out of 5 stars 3 018 11 99 11. This serves as a heat sink designed to distribute heat from the processor itself to a cpu cooler as well as provide protection to the processor inside.