*newbie alert* Thermal Paste

steveland?

My old trusty PC gave up the ghost a while ago so I've ordered some new parts.

I know the RAM was fine, as were the hard drives and DVD burner so I've kept these parts and got compatible bits.

Have a socket 754 AMD64 Semperon processor going into it. Bought it new from eBay and was looking to put it together today but I neglected to get any thermal paste...

Is thermal paste a necessity? Presumably it'd be quite, quite bad if I didn't put any on. Processor fryingly bad.

The heatsink I got with the processor has a little square bit of paste-type stuff... is it usual to have some thermal paste on the bottom of the heatsink when it hasn't been used before?

If that's thermal paste on it then I'm set and it'll save me a trip into Maplin tomorrow after work.

Thought I'd ask here before trying anything because I don't fancy having to order a new processor and cleaning the smell of smoke out of the case...

EDIT: Doh... RTFM Steve... "Your retail AMD processor has pre-applied thermal interface material"

Endurance Man

Indeed, most stock cpu coolers come with the paste applied, just slot and go.

Fanny Cradock

Nothing to worry about. As endurance man said, it is standard on stock units. In fact, you'll never manage to get the paste as evenly applied as they do in the factory.

el Bastardo

You'll get optimal cooling with quality paste but you won't kill your processor if you don't use any. Heatsinks usually ship with a sachet of thermal compound or thermal pad. That stuff on your heatsink is probably a thermal pad, so all things considered, you don't really need to do anything.

steveland? wrote:

My old trusty PC gave up the ghost a while ago so I've ordered some new parts.

I know the RAM was fine, as were the hard drives and DVD burner so I've kept these parts and got compatible bits.

Have a socket 754 AMD64 Semperon processor going into it. Bought it new from eBay and was looking to put it together today but I neglected to get any thermal paste...

Is thermal paste a necessity? Presumably it'd be quite, quite bad if I didn't put any on. Processor fryingly bad.

The heatsink I got with the processor has a little square bit of paste-type stuff... is it usual to have some thermal paste on the bottom of the heatsink when it hasn't been used before?

If that's thermal paste on it then I'm set and it'll save me a trip into Maplin tomorrow after work.

Thought I'd ask here before trying anything because I don't fancy having to order a new processor and cleaning the smell of smoke out of the case...

EDIT: Doh... RTFM Steve... "Your retail AMD processor has pre-applied thermal interface material"

Richard Dower

www.arcticsilver.com

AS5 is best, application instructions at said website.