Will any thermal paste be okay?

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Nagarya

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Jun 8, 2012
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So, I just finished my second build, an office/light gaming PC for my parents. Long story short, when it didn't boot the first time, I took everything out of the case and probably did something kinda dumb - I removed the stock heatsink to look at the thermal paste and put it back on again. (Turns out, it wasn't booting up because I mixed up the cables for the Power Switch and Power LED...*sigh*...)

Anyway, I'm using an A10-6800K, and in the BIOS, it's showing idle temps around 54 C. I imagine when I removed the heatsink and put it back down, I probably got pockets of air trapped. Granted, my cabling isn't perfect (the mATX case I'm using isn't great with options) and the side panels weren't put back on (dunno if that would hurt or help).

Either way, I imagine I should probably buy some thermal paste and redo my CPU heatsink job. If I'm still using AMD's stock cooler, will any thermal paste be adequate?
 
Solution
someguynamedmatt
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Probably, but your temperatures might fluctuate quite a bit depending on what you use. Since this system won't really be thermally stressed, you'd never know the difference, but there probably would be one, however insignificant.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608008
There's a safe bet for any build. It's $1 more than the defacto Arctic Silver 5; it performs better, has no burn-in time, is easier to apply... it's just an excellent thermal compound in general, and is what I always recommend when someone needs a tube. You can't go wrong with it. Your local RadioShack will probably have a severely overpriced tube of Arctic Silver if you absolutely can't wait, but it...
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someguynamedmatt

someguynamedmatt

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Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Probably, but your temperatures might fluctuate quite a bit depending on what you use. Since this system won't really be thermally stressed, you'd never know the difference, but there probably would be one, however insignificant.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608008
There's a safe bet for any build. It's $1 more than the defacto Arctic Silver 5; it performs better, has no burn-in time, is easier to apply... it's just an excellent thermal compound in general, and is what I always recommend when someone needs a tube. You can't go wrong with it. Your local RadioShack will probably have a severely overpriced tube of Arctic Silver if you absolutely can't wait, but it does have quite a long burn in time and can be a bit tricky to apply if you've never used it before. Just something to consider.

I know the feeling... I didn't realize the one case I bought had a split in the cord so the front panel + power button could be detached. Well, they shipped it without having the two halves of the power cord connected, and the case's front panel isn't really something I generally troubleshoot. You can take the story from there. :)
 
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Nagarya

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Jun 8, 2012
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Thanks for the replies, guys. :)

I've never had to replace thermal compound before, so let me just make sure I got this straight. After cleaning off my CPU with some isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs, I can just add a pea-sized drop of the Noctua thermal compound to the center of the CPU, and re-install my stock heat sink. Then everything would be safe to boot up so I can go about my OS install and whatnot?

Luckily that Noctua NT-H1 is on Amazon Prime so I hopefully won't have to wait too long...
 
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