What is the matter with stock Thermal paste

[Greenish]

Hey LTT Community,

I have a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo Air Cooler. It comes with thermal paste and I have recently needed to upgrade my cpu. I have some left over thermal paste to put on the CPU. I dont really see a reason to get new thermal paste. What is the difference between different thermal pastes?

[Senzelian]

The difference between thermal pastes is a lot of marketing bs.

 

You could literally use stuff like toothpaste and it would perform only a couple of degrees worse than actual high quality thermal paste.

 

So you can use the thermal paste that came with your cooler and it will be just fine!

[Oshino Shinobu]

It's generally a good idea to replace the thermal paste when you remove the cooler, just to ensure it spreads correctly and provides proper contact. 

 

Between different thermal pastes, there's very little difference. The only ones that should be noted specifically are the liquid metal ones, which perform better, but also have different properties and some risks to using.