Toothpaste As thermal compound for temporal solution

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Solution
Solandri
As long as the surfaces of the CPU's heat spreader and heat sink are reasonably flat and polished, you can probably just run without any thermal compound for a few hours. The vast majority of the heat transfer from the CPU to heatsink is via metal-on-metal contact. Thermal compound is not some magic material which substitutes for metal-on-metal contact. It's actually about 100x worse at conducting heat than metal to metal. The only reason it's used is because it's about 100x better than air, so it's preferable to have it filling in what would otherwise be air gaps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAr2wKZ_nes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX6AN4vWZP0

I wouldn't do anything stressful with it like gaming, and I'd immediately check...
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uthpala hettiarachchi

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Oct 22, 2014
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That's the problem...... I can't wait until then and I can't get the thermal compound now........ I read some on some sites that it was ok and some has used it for months......... I just want to make sure so I decided ask you guys........
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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Jan 4, 2012
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As long as the surfaces of the CPU's heat spreader and heat sink are reasonably flat and polished, you can probably just run without any thermal compound for a few hours. The vast majority of the heat transfer from the CPU to heatsink is via metal-on-metal contact. Thermal compound is not some magic material which substitutes for metal-on-metal contact. It's actually about 100x worse at conducting heat than metal to metal. The only reason it's used is because it's about 100x better than air, so it's preferable to have it filling in what would otherwise be air gaps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAr2wKZ_nes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX6AN4vWZP0

I wouldn't do anything stressful with it like gaming, and I'd immediately check the temps after the first boot to make sure your particular CPU and heatsink have enough metal-on-metal contact to do a reasonable job cooling. But more than likely it'll be just fine.
 
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Solution
synphul

synphul

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Mar 11, 2011
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With only 6hrs wait time I think I'd opt to wait. Unless it was some random pc found somewhere that all it needed to run was mounting a cooler and all I had was toothpaste and it meant sending out an s.o.s. call or something. This sounds like a situation where someone doesn't want to wait 6hrs rather than 'cant'. I suppose it's worked in some extreme testing situations though I wouldn't recommend it. Sounds like a real roll of the dice to me. If thermal paste were just frivolous or purely 'optional' it wouldn't be included with just about every cooler sold and wouldn't be used on every prebuilt system.
 
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delaro

delaro

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Aug 23, 2011
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Actually there have been some off the wall tests done with common household goop to replace Thermal Paste, here have a read.

You got your peanut butter on my cpu!
http://forums.overclockersclub.com/topic/164465-you-got-your-peanutbutter-on-my-cpu-you-got-your-cpu-in-my-peanut/

Homemade Thermal Grease
http://www.overclockers.com/homemade-thermal-grease/
 
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bmacsys

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Jul 4, 2013
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I certainly would never advise doing this. The tim is essential. The heat transfer between the two concave surfaces is very poor without it.
 
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akseli

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Jun 6, 2009
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You could scrape old termal sollution off from old CPU or cooler if you are replacing either or both. It won't be as good as fresh stuff but nearly so, and the amount of required is pretty little after all.


Thoothpaste is mostly water so it will vaporize pretty fast and the remaining stuff is some kind of grease type substance and other mostly organic stuff that really doens't transfer heat well. In the above test it fared probably bad because it will not spread out evenly, probably the water will push the rest of the gut outwards.
 
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madmatt30

madmatt30

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What-A-Ya-Nuts-logo.jpg
 
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Exeonx

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I've seen temperature benchmarks using all different kinds of thermal pastes and actual toothpaste.

Toothpaste works, but you can often see an increase from 10-15c over thermal pastes, also I'm not sure how durable it would be, as toothpaste isn't really made to transfer heat between a burning CPU and the cooler.

 
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synphul

synphul

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Mar 11, 2011
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A lot of things that have 'worked' aren't necessarily things I'd recommend. Luckily the toothpaste held up though with such a short time until proper thermal compound would arrive I think I would've waited personally. Now for the real question, does minty fresh have better cooling properties? Lol.
 
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