External build without thermal paste

redlight

Distinguished
May 31, 2013
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I'll be using a liquid cooler that comes with high quality thermal paste pre-installed. I don't want to have to apply additional thermal paste to the stock cooler when I use it for testing outside of the case (which really will be less than a minute to make sure the core components work. Will it be okay to test the parts with the stock cooler on WITHOUT thermal paste, especially for the short amount of time?