A Guide to Proper Thermal Paste Installation

Importance of Thermal Interface Explained

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 01/20/2006 | 11:07 AM ]

Many users undervalue the benefits of properly installed thermal paste. Random resets, freezes, reduction of processor’s lifespan and even sudden chip burn, may occur if the thermal grease is installed improperly or isn’t installed at all.

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Hardware Secrets has put up an article that explains the importance of thermal greases. The article includes step by step description of thermal paste installation on CPUs including AMD Athlon XP and Intel Pentium III, as well as today’s top offering from both companies.

The author also mentions the most common mistakes made during thermal grease application.

“From the microscopical point of view, the physical contact between the processor and the cooler isn’t perfect. Imperfections that exist both on processor surface and cooler surface prevent the 100% perfect contact between them. As both surfaces aren’t perfectly even, minuscule gaps of air are formed when putting them together. As air is a terrible heat conductor (its conductibility coefficient is 0.026 W/m°K), the heat will pass with more difficulty from the processor to the cooler, which can result in overheating. To solve the problem and improve the heat transfer between the processor and the cooler, we should apply thermal grease between them in order to fill in the tiny gaps of air. By doing so, the heat transfer between the processor and the cooler is more easily made, since the thermal grease has higher conductibility coefficient than the air,” explains Hardware Secrets.

• Hardware Secrets: How to Correctly Apply Thermal Grease.