Question

[Clarentavious]

Do some heatsinks actually work better without thermal paste? Because I am getting some conflicting temperature results (either that or the monitor probe on my motherboard is screwy)

I've read the thermal paste is simply supposed provide contact between the microscopic dye layer of your CPU core and the metal on the heatsink. I've also read putting too much on will hamper the heat dissipation.

I have a pure copper heatsink. Do you guys think I should just run a test with no paste to see what type of results I get?

 

[Crashman]

You need the gaps between your sink and die to be filled with some kind of thermally conductive material. The only other solution is to eliminate the gaps.

Storries is "too much paste" creating a thick layer that doesn't conduct well are back from the Pentium 1 days, when paste were thick, spring pressures were low, and contact surfaces were large. Todays coolers use high tension springs, which will squash out any excess of today's thinner pastes. But you still want to eliminate messes by using very little paste.

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