I7 975 stock cooler no thermal compound

Its not a big idea if you have extra bucks to replace the fired one  

Seriously !lol
And after you try this, try running your car engine with no oil, or to blow the engine just a little slower drain the coolant !
edit: let me add the thermal compound will clean off very easily. Use a drip of alcohol on a qtip.

Use the TIM. It will take you only a few minutes to clean the old stuff off.

Best answer selected by cw64.

lol 975 with no TIM is a disaster waiting to happen.....

Makes me wonder how these people get all this money to drop on their comps.

Well hopefully the OP did not pay 1k for that chip.......that would be sad....

Sorry to necro this but the advice here is a bit silly.

No, it's not smart to run your processor with no thermal paste.

No, you will not ruin it.

If the processor gets too hot it will throttle and then shut down before any damage is done. Get a temperature monitoring program and see for yourself. It might be an interesting test; tell us just how high your temperatures are without thermal compound.

It's not going to be insta-fire like everyone seems to be implying; thermal paste does not lower your temps by 50c or some crazy thing like that; it improves contact between processor and HSF. You will probably scratch the processor a little bit though.

Anyway this is an old thread so you probably have your water cooling by now. All the same I'd love to see any tests with/without thermal paste. I'd do it myself but my cooler was a !?&%)! to install and I don't want to have to do it again.

Anyway it was moot for you. Did you actually LOOK at the stock HSF? Most i7's and i5's come with pre-applied thermal paste. Unless the 975 is different you really didn't have a choice in the matter.