Thermal paste cpu

[0nly222]

Do you need thermal paste for the corsair h110i gtx liquid CPU cooler?do you need to keep the water clean and change it?

 

[SKIPPY PB]

I believe I have an h100i and if it comes prefilled I don't believe you need to change it. I don't think these systems get hot enough where you would have to change it anyway.

I put a nice thin layer of artic silver on mine. Its there to get into the tiny imperfections in the metal. Honestly im sure you could get away without it but it wouldn't hurt to put some. I know of plenty of kids that wiped the thermal compound off because they didn't know what it was and there systems have been running fine.

 

[unksol]

It comes with paste. Yes you absolutely need to use it. No you can't change the water on a closed loop cooler.

 

[k1114]

Thermal paste is a must. Take off your paste and watch what happens to your temps. All those kids probably took it off to put on better stuff.

 

[SKIPPY PB]

Thermal paste is a must. Take off your paste and watch what happens to your temps. All those kids probably took it off to put on better stuff.

I agree that you should put a compound there to aid in heat transfer. But depending on the CPU and Cooler your temp changes will vary. Of course the AMD 8-core 4.7 GHz CPU will get affected much greater. But if you monitor your temps some CPU's don't get affected as much.

I have ran multiple old LGA 775 CPU's without thermal compound to testing/diagnosing/etc and only have seen minor jumps in the temps. The CPU/motherboard will shut down if the temps exceed a certain limit and protect you from catastrophic failure. At stock settings without thermal compound multiple CPU's have only reached temps under what they reach with thermal compound in an overclocked setting. However these where not new components and there is probably residue in those nooks and crannies. Metal on metal is superior for heat transfer. Now if you are going to game without that paste I would highly not recommend it especially full screen where you won't be able to monitor temps. But browsing the internet, documents, etc have never really brought the temps up to a critical threshold atleast for me. I don't run a whats it called FX-9590?

 

[k1114]

We are here to assist others and not give horrible advise. Just because a few cpus would be "ok" without paste doesn't mean you should ever suggest not using paste and potentially cause issues for them. Even if temps don't get to shut off temps, there is no reason to run a cpu hotter than it needs to be and trip prochot. The h100i is convex and so are many modern cpus so that's not a good contact area without paste. Older cpus like 775 are concave and many other coolers are convex so would fare better. If someone is getting an h100i, they probably aren't using an old or low end cpu and they probably want to be more careful with expensive hardware.