Guess it simply wasn't necessary. Most 486 coolers are tiny and are just glued or clipped into the CPU.

My guess is it wasn't used that time because:
1)It never had been used, nor was it ever necessary till someone actually thought of using thermal paste
2)486's typically only produce under 10W in total, which is hardly anything.
Once you get over 10W's, I'd say thermal paste starts to actually do something.
Once you pass the 20W mark, then I'd personally say thermal paste is highly recommended (though chips like the slower s370 P3's and Celerons typically can even manage without thermal paste if the HSF itself is somewhat beefy).

I'd say anything Pentium or similar (especially Cyrix and K6-anything) would really enjoy having thermal paste.

For completeness, I distinguish (a personal choice ftr) between copper and non-copper coolers. I try to use all-aluminium coolers on nothing hotter then a P3 or perhaps a slower Palomino (and the palomino only because of it's larger die, and only if the cooler itself has at least a 7cm fan. Ran one myself with such a cooler for a year or so).
Thunderbirds and (usually) any Athlon XP I use a heatsink with at least some copper in it.

Hmmm copper. Very nice 😁

That's an interesting question. Quite possibly some early 486 chips under normal load will not run notably cooler with paste. Enough of them used only modest sinks dry-clipped & without fans. The contact area may already be quite large enough to transfer their minor heat to the fin area.

All the paste does is enlarge the contact area by removing the tiny air-gap between imperfect surfaces. Technically you can enlarge the contact area all you want, but at a certain point it gains nothing because you've hit the limit of the fin area instead.

I'm using a heatsink-only cooler (the common one with fins). But using an internal 80mm case fan blowing towards it. If only I have a good heat sensor conneted to an external LED display.... (I just don't know how well it's being cooled..)

Is this a worry, or a curiosity?

It should be fine unless you're overclocking. If it's getting too hot you'll notice instability.

If you want to improve the cooling regardless, a simple thing would be to make a tube from the case fan to just over the sink.

EDIT: Oh, and _thank you_ for the soundblaster collection.

Glad to be of help. 😀

I'm not sure what is my 486DX2-66 running temperature. And wondering how much it's been cooled with the fan.

Ya thermal paste was uncommon with 486. Most of those systems didn't even have heatsinks. If a heatsink was used, with say 66+, it was often glued on. Some sockets don't even have mounting tabs.

swaaye wrote:

Some sockets don't even have mounting tabs.

^True^

And none I've seen have the middle ones, limiting one to only using the wire clip (or in theory a clip for 3 notches + heatsink).

I've been thinking of taking pics of contemporary heatsinks, but have no "reason" to do so except for showing the development of the CPU heatsink, so to say.