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. 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. If you see areas of gray looking material on a copper plate the thermal paste has already been applied. Sometimes you actually don t need to apply thermal paste if you bought a cpu heat sink combo.

Because it is a thick liquid it will fill in all the gaps on the component and the bottom of the heatsink. Laird thermal paste image source. Thermal paste is a paste that contains either silicone and zinc oxide the cheaper versions or silver ceramic the more expensive ones. Thermal paste is applied to the cpu and heat sinks to improve their ability to cool down and conduct heat efficiently.

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. A layer of thermal paste or thermal grease will form a complete coating over the top of the component. Some heat sinks will actually come with thermal paste already applied in this case. 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.

With a pretty sufficient 8 5w mk thermal conductivity rating gc extreme has got all the capacity to handle efficiently and transfer it to the heat sink from your gpu. It s really easy to spot too. 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. This provides much better heat transfer to the heat sink.