Thermal Glue

What would happen to a proccessor without thermal grease or thermal glue? (see details)?

Why do people put thermal glue on a CPU, wouldn't the heat sink be enough?

Public Comments

1. The heat sink is not enough...the thermal grease and/or glue act as a heat conductor which creates a bridge for the heat to move from the cpu to the heat sink...You will burn out your cpu without it...
2. The thermal compound helps transfer the CPU's heat to the heatsink. A heatsink may work, but there are gaps between the CPU and the heatsink when they don't have thermal compound between them and the transfer of heat may be delayed and help in overheating. I believe new CPUs like Pentium 4s and Athlon 64's have thermal protection to help prevent overheating. In conclusion, it is in your best interest to use thermal compound to prevent possible problems in the future. Thermal compound isn't too expensive and usually comes with all retail CPU packages and with many heatsink/fans. I recommend Artic Silver, but its expensive.
3. The compound between the heatsink and processor helps heat move from the processor to the heatsink by creating a better bond between the two. Basically, the two surfaces aren't necessarily flat and the compound fills in those gaps.
4. Thermal grease helps conduct heat from the CPU to the heat sink in a significant way. On a microscopic level, the heat sink and CPU both have rough surfaces, so point to point heat transfer is not very efficient. A thin layer of thermal grease helps to fill the gaps, so the heat moves to the heat sink. (A thick layer is definitely not better.) < http://www.directron.com/type44.html > has more info. Most glues are organic, so they don't conduct heat as well as thermal 'grease.'
5. As we know AIR is a bad conductor of heat and when you place the heat sink on top of the CPU the heat dissipated from the CPU cannot be conducted to the heat sink through air. it may seem like the CPU and the heat sink lie on top of each other seamless, but indeed there is air, so to remove air and the best conduction of heat, thermal paste is applied in between the two parts i.e CPU and Heat sink.
6. The thermal paste on the cpu helps transfer the heat from the processor to the heatsink more efficiently, and quicker than running it without. The cpu will quickly burn up without the paste. Please do not run it without, as you will destroy the processor, and have to purchase a new one. Thermal paste is not expensive, and it only takes a very small amount for proper operation. Applying too much will actually slow down heat transfer, and possibly short out the contacts where the processor plugs in. I hope this helps. :)