Is thermal grease a must?

For an AMD system, running a 1.1 T-Bird, is it absolutely neccessary to have thermal grease between the core and HS? Or can I get away with not using it?

Just curious.

- Thanks

thermal grease is a must on all heatsink and cores or they wont heat transfer properly
unless u have thermal pads on

You must have some sort of thermal interface as neither surface is ever perfectly flat.

I know a professor at Cerritos College that'll tell you it's a waste of time.






(he meant the older systems for those of you that are freaking out)

even the older systems put out heat and lots of it. thermal interface materials have been used (and nessesary) for as long as I know of. Tell him to pull apart any system and ask him if there is some form of tim between the cpu and h/s. I have an IBM P1 system 91mhz that had thermal goo on it from the factory. They would not waste the money to put it there if it was a "waste of time". Please tell me that this is a liberal arts teacher and not the computer science person.

Meh, bad schooling. I have a 533 Celeron and a 700 P3 that I run now and then with 24hr loops of 3dmark with nothing between the mating surfaces. Lots of pre-builts I've taken apart for parts have dried up compounds and have yet to see a problem with them.

Most of the P1's has something, others just had thier HS.. no fan, glued right to the CPU... seen that quite a bit.

GameFAQsRolo said:

Meh, bad schooling. I have a 533 Celeron and a 700 P3 that I run now and then with 24hr loops of 3dmark with nothing between the mating surfaces. Lots of pre-builts I've taken apart for parts have dried up compounds and have yet to see a problem with them.

Click to expand...

Not using a TIM, just shortens the lifespan of a CPU. The 533 celeron probably has enough surface contact to provide enough heat dissapation to cool it. The P3 700, however I don't think will be alive in a few months/years running full load. AMD's run extremely hot in comparision to Intel chips. Running without some sort of thermal interface these days is just not an option these days (IMO). Even a dried out compound will transfer heat more effectively than nothing at all. The reason it's in paste/semi-liquid form is so that you can spread it. (i.e.: ease of use.)

Thermal meterial costs anywhere from $0.99c to $10...put something there man

LOL, I'm just saying that being, what is labeled as, careless isn't as bad as some people make it out to be. I've worked under very poor conditions and have not had any problems due to the carelessness. The athlon t-birds are a completely new breed of processors that first introduced the absolute need for proper active cooling, but before that thermal compounds and fans were always overlooked.

I've been with computers for years and have seen older systems burn out, but those were few and far between. If I knew my girlfriend would understand, I'd love to stick that P3 in a prime95 loop until it gives out (I'd love to witness it too, but guessing its death would be a little hard).

My comment about the professor was solely meant as a joke, but as a new member of the board, I don't want to goof up my reputation. The professor did say it though. Teaching the computer tech class was purely for his pleasure(and the school's benefit having the class repair their stuff). Computers were taken apart and rebuilt and whenever someone asked how much paste to use, he replied with "don't waste your time". Did he follow this idea with more recent computers, nope.

Now, if that explains that...