Do I need thermal paste to seat AMD A10 5800K?

[jorgegonzalez]

I have an ASUS F2 A85-M CSM motherboard, and the above mentioned CPU. I'm just starting to put it together, and I'm reading online that some need thermal paste, and some don't. How do I know?

The motherboard instructions say use thermal paste if necessary, but the CPU box doesn't mention thermal paste. Didn't know I might need this at all :/

 

[Z1NONLY]

If the heat-sink didn't come with pre-applied thermal paste, you need to get some.

 

[simon12]

If you got the cooler with the CPU then it comes pre-applied if you bought the cooler separately then it may be pre-applied or come in a tube. If its not pre-applied you NEED to use it.

 

[Z1NONLY]

I think every A10 currently available comes with a heat sink.

Does the heat sink have a "remove before use" sticker?

 

[jorgegonzalez]

The fan that came with it does not have a "remove before use" sticker. I saw on a youtube video that you don't need it, but what does youtube know?

 

[jaguarskx]

Retail CPUs usually come with a heatsink that already have thermal paste applied to the bottom the heatsink and there will be a tab / sticker that should say "remove before use" or something like that as you stated above.

If the bottom of the heatsink is bare metal, then apparently you got a heatsink without any pre-applied thermal paste. I suppose this sort of thing can happen on a mass production scale. Each CPU / APU is not individually inspected by a human being. Doing so is expensive and will significantly drive up the price of each CPU / APU.

All you need to do is to buy some thermal paste on your own. Arctic Silver 5 has been around for some time but it is still good stuff. There's also MX-4 and IC Diamond just to name two that are even better and more expensive. One warning about IC Diamond though... it can cause minor / very shallow scratches on the CPU (GPU as well). That is by design and it believe it is partially why it is effective. If you do not want minor scratches on your CPU, then avoid using IC Diamond.