Dry running CPUs for testing

Afford

Commendable
Jul 17, 2017
24
0
1,510
I’m have recently found 3 good cpu’s and motherboards for free and I am going to flip them for a bit of extra cash towards my gaming pc. I’ve just bought everything I need to test them except for thermal paste. Because I found th in an ewaste place, I don’t know what may work, so I’ll have to test 9 times. Can I not use thermal paste to test them? When I say test, I mean load into windows, or even get into the bios. I have an i5 2320, i5 2400, i7 2600, Asia H-61m Le and lx, and an oem hp mobo. I have an old intel stock cooler, two newer ones but with copper in the middle, and a cooler master hyper tx3 evo.
 
Solution
You really need some paste. The very cheapest will do.
That said, I recall some tests using ghetto paste alternatives.
Toothpaste, peanut butter(not chunky) among them.
A drop of olive oil will be somewhat heat resistant and might be ok also.

It only needs to give you basic functionality to see that the cpu does not throttle immediately.

Regardless, you need to have a tube of thermal paste in your kit.
You might as well buy a tube now.
Don't be too cheap.

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
Some good thermal paste, even mediocre ones will not cost you an arm and a leg. I'd say you should use TIM between the cooler and the CPU's IHS to make sure you're not gong through some thermal issues. Can you verify where you sourced the Intel stock cooler from? If it's from the LGA775 platform, it's not going to work.
 
I suspect it would probably work okay for brief testing, though there's a good chance that the CPUs will thermal throttle under load.

One possible thing you could use as a temporary thermal compound substitute would be a drop of mineral oil, such as baby oil. Mineral oil should conduct heat fairly well, but not electricity, so it is unlikely to harm components, and should be easy to clean off. I'm sure it's not suitable for long-term installation, but for short term use it should work well enough.
 
You really need some paste. The very cheapest will do.
That said, I recall some tests using ghetto paste alternatives.
Toothpaste, peanut butter(not chunky) among them.
A drop of olive oil will be somewhat heat resistant and might be ok also.

It only needs to give you basic functionality to see that the cpu does not throttle immediately.

Regardless, you need to have a tube of thermal paste in your kit.
You might as well buy a tube now.
Don't be too cheap.
 
Solution
If you have to wait to buy thermal paste online and you are really want to test the CPU's, just run to an auto part store and ask for thermal compound, not thermal glue or adhesive!!!

Its normally white paste, but it will work. I have some auto thermal paste I had to use for a Chevy Blazer for the ICM (Ignition control module). and I have used this stuff on a video card, my brother GTX 1070 in fact that was having thermal problems due to a misaligned thermal pad, thanks Gigabyte...