Toothpaste vs Thermal Paste

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Adam360

Commendable
Mar 22, 2016
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So I had quick look under my CPU yesterday to find out all the thermal paste was pretty much dried up. I ordered some from Amazon but it wouldn't be arriving until the day after. I needed to get work done, right now.

Looking online I decided to mix toothpaste and Vaseline together and applied it.
My CPU didn't go above 70c, I've just applied the Thermal Paste and it's around 69c.
How is that even possible?
 
Toothpaste shouldn't be actually all that great for thermal conductivity though it'll do the job, no doubt.
Real problems arise over time as toothpaste dries and cracks a lot sooner than thermal paste as it's not really designed for that purpose. Also I don't know what effect it would have on any of the components over time. Would there be corrosion? Thermal paste is designed to be inert.
I don't know about vaseline, never really read anything about it, though it's an interesting experiment. I remember a review that used it as a comparison, and even tried dental fixture :) (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermal-paste-performance-benchmark,3616-18.html)
Thermal paste often comes nowadays with third party coolers so you shouldn't have to resort to these measures though.
 
While its still wet it will transfers the heat. As it dries tho its not filled with silver particles like the thermal paste. The heat will climb fast and burn up the cpu. See the thermal paste transfers the heat as good wet or dry. Artic Silver 5 transfers heat for nearly a decade as well as it did the first day applied.
 
The petroleum jelly will protect the toothpaste from drying out, but petroleum jelly also melts very easily and could make a godawful mess.

Toothpaste for a day or two is fine, but don't stress your CPU more than you need to in order to get the crucial stuff done and don't tarry on replacing the toothpaste when your thermal paste arrives.
 


Some, what? Fill in the blanks for us boss.

 

Interesting idea though.:lol:
I wonder, if anyone has tried that.

Edit: Probably not a good idea, because of chunkiness of the substance. And cleaning would not be pleasant also.
 


 
Thanks for the links. That was one of the best looking planes ever designed. I will even use the term......sexy. That and the 105 Thunder Chief did some serious damage.
 

PM me?
 

He meant this:
th

 
The temperature of the CPU depends on the CPU Cooler (CPU fan).
The mainboard will be set to keep the CPU at a constant temperature.
What you should be measuring is the CPU fan speed.
You will probably find it is running much faster when using toothpaste.

I used to write production test software for a system builder's factory process. We made 1000+ PCs/notebooks a day. Every system was monitored and I logged CPU temp, HDD temp, fan speeds, voltages, etc. whilst running normal loads and a stress test.All results were stored in a database and analysed at the end of burn-in.
I found many systems that had 'normal' CPU temperatures but the CPU fan was spinning a lot faster than other identical systems. This was because the heatsink had not been fitted properly! Measuring CPU fan speed proved to be the most valuable and useful diagnostic test out of all the data that was collected!
 


If by using a very thin film of aluminium foil (food rap) between the cpu and the cooler, would you have equivalent or better results? aluminium is a great conductor of heat.

If the cooler to cpu contact is copper, another great conductor of heat, you would just want to be assured that contact with the cpu is great and can be done without the need of paste. Paste is for sloppy fitting coolers or as a guarantee that you made an error in installing the cooler..
 
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