Using CPU/Heatsink without thermal material
-
I finally got the chance to remove thermal paste sitting between CPU/Heatsink while replacing my mainboard.
The purpose of this is to have the best heat transfer between CPU/Heatsink. According to my mainboard manual, thermal material
for the CPU/Heatsink is not a must. My opinion is unless both the surfaces of CPU/Heatsink are poorly engineered and require thermal material
to fill the gaps. The result is a success. I had upload some images that include removing of thermal paste from CPU/Heatsink and CPU temperature readings while playing. Kindly share your opinions and experiences on this.
-
@teots I found that just cleaning out the dust on the cooling fins solved my CPU overheating problems. Playing video at lower quality also makes a big difference. 480p is my default, which is usually adequate.
-
@teots If you stick to fairly light tasks that don't stress the CPU too much, you might get away without using some sort of thermal interface, but it is not a good idea.
The motherboard's manual is likely worded that way because many coolers come with thermal paste already applied. And the motherboard shouldn't have any say in whether you would need to use thermal paste or not. If there were such an application where thermal paste was unnecessary, it would be the place of the CPU and cooler manufacturers to say that they, in conjunction, work without the thermal interface material. The motherboard isn't involved in how well the heat producing component and the heat dissipating apparatus interface (there is some involvement, especially with current Intel CPU mounting, but not as important to this conversation).
Looking at the picture of the cooler, that surface is nowhere near flat enough to forgo a thermal paste. The interface between the different parts is terrible for cooling efficiency and an uneven surface that introduces air makes it even worse. All the inconsistencies in the surface could cause hot spots on parts of the CPU, that might not be measured with temperature sensors, which will shorten the life of your CPU.
An AMD CPU has a particular risk of developing hotspots because the CPU is made up of multiple chiplets, so the heat is spread out on a wider area. The likelihood of the cooler and CPU heat spreader being flat enough across that large area to achieving sufficient cooling without something to help with the interfacing of the rough surfaces is unlikely.
You can try running a CPU stress test, not too long because you could damage the CPU without proper cooling, and compare it to when you apply some sort of thermal interface material (thermal paste, liquid metal, or CPU specific thermal pad).
A properly cooled CPU should be able to maintain a safe temperature without thermal throttling, but I suspect your current setup would quickly thermal throttle.
-
@teots As said above, I think you're misinterpreting "if necessary" as "not needed", it's not the same thing.
There's good reason thermal paste has been needed since the dawn of PC building. No metal surface will be completely flat, there will always be small irregularities. Especially your image of the cooler base shows this clearly.
The job of the thermal paste is to smooth out these irregularities, getting into the small holes and ensuring a good heat transfer from the CPU to the cooler.
Playing a game is not a good stress test - games are too varied in CPU load, and most newer games are much more taxing on the GPU than the CPU. A better test is using a tool to load your CPU directly over a long time.
A great tool for this is Prime95, it calculates prime numbers and will max out all your CPU cores while running. If your system can run this for several hours without crashing or lowering the CPU speed because it reaches the heat limit, it means your cooling setup is working.
