Introduction
Well, you've got your new cooler and CPU but it is hot, you've not got any thermal paste, or you have used the cheap stuff which comes with your cooler. You know that pink blob on the Orbs for example. Well we have a treat for you. This is special paste, it has better heat dissipation and helps cool your CPU more apparently.When I thought about it, I personally thought 'what a load of rubbish, this stuff cant make much difference, and how the hell can they charge 3 times as much for it? Wow it is silver is that all that's special?' Well we will find out... Think about it, you've spent 200 quid on a CPU, a little more for the extra safety on your CPU wont make much difference.
Well it turned up and I was worried about how good it would be looking at it, but never the less it did look cool, and it was certainly silver. I got home and I thought well, enough of all of these problems with the CPU getting hot (it ran at 51 under stress with an Alpha and normal white paste).
When they are making coolers and CPUs, a lot of work goes in to it, and the best way to have it would be to have a perfectly smooth sides on both so they "stuck" together. It would have to be highly polished and very smooth, but this is hard and expensive.
To achieve this smooth service it is a lot of work. A lot of people, when the first batch of celerons were out, went out and lapped the CPUs to make it in to a mirror setup. They did this to get rid of the air in the gaps, air sucks to be honest the only use is to let you breathe. You could mill your heatsink and CPU and make it perfectly flat, but how many people do you know with a milling machine? Well neither do I. Also this would be too expensive to take to a shop for.
So whats the next best thing? Well, Thermal paste. This has been around for a long time, as it was used on the 486s to hold the heatsinks onto the CPUs, but back then they didn't understand the best way to do it, they just put a massive glob on the CPU and stuck the heatsink to it using this, which didn't help much, but the cpus didn't get too hot and therefore it didn't matter. Nowadays it is a different story.
This is even more mission critical when your overclocking, as you are pushing the CPU further than it should be going, sometimes up to 90%. This means a good application of good quality thermal paste makes a massive difference! The best way that it should be is a very thin layer rather than insulating the CPU with the bloody stuff! ;)
When you're putting this stuff on, the aim is to fill all of the little gaps and getting rid of all the air, but if you do it wrong it can get very hot and cause problems. You should always put it on the CPU before you install it. The best way I found to do this is to put a little blob on your finger and dab it on the cpu and then put the heatsink on. This means that they get an even paste.
Most people recommend rubbing the CPU with the heatsink, to get rid of all of the air bubbles, but to be honest this is a damn stupid thing to do especially with a Socket A CPU, bubbi core if this happens.
What is in that stuff? Thermal compounds consist of two components: 1) Silicone or a similar binder and 2) The conductive material itself. The conductive material usually falls in one of two categories: Metal filled or metal oxide filled. The difference between these is that the oxides aren’t electrically conductive whilst still maintaining the original thermal conductive properties of the metal before it oxidised.
The performance of thermal compound is measured in W/mK Standard 0.9 W/m*K and high end decent stuff @ 5.5 / 6 w/MK
