20076120 :
So I just got an i7 7700k, do you think it would be fine without thermal paste for a few days until I get one delivered?
There’s no shops in my area that sell them.
Or will that do a lot of damage to the CPU?
In my experience I had about 4/5 computers,one about 2010, one of 2004, and the others really old, since I was young and stupid I didn't even know that there was something called "thermal paste" I thought it was just glue, and after cleaning them from the dust I just put the fan over without caring about it, they worked fine for almost a year and a half, and they hit more than 90 degree only when I tried to overclock them, usually they were at 60/70, 80 when playing.
From the other hand there was a friend of mine where I did the same thing with a 2015 computer, it just forze it after some minutes and had to turn it off; after putting the thermal paste it started working fine again.
I think you can feel free to try, if the temperatures go too high the computers should prevent any damage by stopping themselves.
hope it helps.