Might as well use it. The stuff is cheap. Hell, use pure zinc oxide sunblock if that's all you can find.

The goal of thermal paste is to provide a good contact between the heated surface, and the heat dissipator (Heatsink). If you can get a good contact without it, you may be fine on lower power devices, but if you can use it, you should, as there is no reason not to.

ok I have antec formula 5 silver thermal compound

how is the best way to put on a cpu and not be too much

I've always gone with about a pea sized amount in the center and put on the heatsink.

That said I believe Arctic Silver 5 is conductive, so you might want to spread a thin layer on the CPU instead to minimize any spillage to prevent shorting out anything.

No need for thermal paste on that pentium, i'm a computer technician and built a lot of them.

No need for thermal paste on a P-133

Yeah, if all you have is Arctic Silver, I wouldn't use it. Just use the heat sink. I don't know how that stuff would react if it got somewhere it shouldn't. BTW, how did this thread get so many views? Over 2500 at the moment.

For conductive AS5, I'd cut the amount, even a small spot would be better than none... never been convinced that the pre-spread method won't trap air, as compared to the spot squishing out - and a good pre-spread is very hard to do

You want just a small amount, enough to cover the center of the CPU when it's squished out by the heat sink. You don't have to be as careful with a gold or ceramic top Pentium, but a Pentium MMX has a smaller slug on top, so less is better.

I never used thermal on my 133 and I still have it with me in working order now 20 years later, at least I hope it works.. hasn't been in a board for some years 😊 .. the heatsink and fan was more than enough to keep it perfectly cool. Thermal will give you a better contact and lower temps but if you're worried don't sweat it. If you do want to apply it, a little ball dead center somewhere between the size of a bb and a smaller than a pea is sufficient.

Yup, less than the size of a Tic Tac or Aspirin. You need very little and there's no special method to apply it. Just put it dead center on the CPU die.

I always use the spread method. Nothing too thick, just a nice layer to cover everything and not get extruded all the way out of the center when the heatsink presses on. Picked this up from component manufacturers. If they don't use "pea" or "dot" method neither should I.

Thanks for all the responds and will see what it's like without thermal paste for a while and judge from there

This thread made me curious. My 100Mhz and 120Mhz pentium processors have never had their heatsink removed from the cpu, so that made me wonder. Did pentiums come originally with some sort of thermal compound between the cpu and the heatsink in prebuilt systems?

Baoran wrote:

This thread made me curious. My 100Mhz and 120Mhz pentium processors have never had their heatsink removed from the cpu, so that made me wonder. Did pentiums come originally with some sort of thermal compound between the cpu and the heatsink in prebuilt systems?

My Packard Bell P120 has the heatskink glued on. I haven't been able to get it off, meaning I can't use it in other systems due to proprietary shaping/format. Since it's my only non-MMX Pentium, I haven't been brave enough to pry it off as I don't want to risk breaking it. 🤣.

Baoran wrote:

This thread made me curious. My 100Mhz and 120Mhz pentium processors have never had their heatsink removed from the cpu, so that made me wonder. Did pentiums come originally with some sort of thermal compound between the cpu and the heatsink in prebuilt systems?

Back then, I found that many of these OEM systems did use some kind of tin foil-like stuff between the heatsink and the CPU. Soms also had black stuff that seemed to be a lot as if it were graphite.
Some also did have TIM...and lots of it! It was as if they wanted the TIM to actually cool the CPU and the heatsink was there just for good looks or something 🤣

But those 133MHz Pentiums can live without TIM. I did use a very small drop of TIM (about the size of grain or something) whenever I was assembling a rig but for such CPUs I never bother with TIM if it's only for testing.

Yes, but cool chips live longer, happier lives.

gdjacobs wrote:

Yes, but cool chips live longer, happier lives.

True. Err, what I meant with testing is basically just to see if it will post. If I actually run the CPU with anything, I'd always apply TIM as it's very little effort to do so anyway 😀

Tetrium wrote:

Back then, I found that many of these OEM systems did use some kind of tin foil-like stuff between the heatsink and the CPU. Som […]
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Baoran wrote:

This thread made me curious. My 100Mhz and 120Mhz pentium processors have never had their heatsink removed from the cpu, so that made me wonder. Did pentiums come originally with some sort of thermal compound between the cpu and the heatsink in prebuilt systems?

Back then, I found that many of these OEM systems did use some kind of tin foil-like stuff between the heatsink and the CPU. Soms also had black stuff that seemed to be a lot as if it were graphite.
Some also did have TIM...and lots of it! It was as if they wanted the TIM to actually cool the CPU and the heatsink was there just for good looks or something 🤣

But those 133MHz Pentiums can live without TIM. I did use a very small drop of TIM (about the size of grain or something) whenever I was assembling a rig but for such CPUs I never bother with TIM if it's only for testing.

This. I just cleaned a Coppermine P3 yesterday and there was one of these thermal pad/adhesives completely stuck to the heatsink. It had a blob of TIM on top of it from the previous owner who didn't clean off the original pad, which just made it even worse. I scraped the adhesive off the best I could with a blade then wet sanded until I got back to the metal nice and smooth, put a drop of MX-4 on it and closed it back up good as new.

What's funny to me is that as these pads break down I bet they become far more inefficient than just a bare metal contact with no TIM. I always remove the junk and get a smooth finish on used old chips and heatsinks before using