Thermal Paste Already On Heat Sink

A good heat sink can be crippled by a mismatched thermal compound.

Thermal paste already on heat sink.

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. Thermal paste is applied to the cpu and heat sinks to improve their ability to cool down and conduct heat efficiently. It s really easy to spot too. Some heat sinks will actually come with thermal paste already applied in this case.

Laird thermal paste image source. 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. A good match between cooler and paste can achieve more than just blindly choosing an expensive thermal compound. 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.

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. This provides much better heat transfer to the 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.

Because it is a thick liquid it will fill in all the gaps on the component and the bottom of the heatsink. 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. There s no need to add more. A layer of thermal paste or thermal grease will form a complete coating over the top of the component.