Thermal paste is purely for cooling correct?

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

I was re-installing my h100i and go on to put my thermal paste and I'm out. I was able to put such a small ammount that I thought my CPU would burn on startup but to my surprise I hit maximum 44 degress C in Arma 3 so it's all good. Now it's probably not covering much so there is difintely more metal to metal contact but thermal paste is really just for heat? If there wouldn't be any at all it would still be ok right?

[Hackentosher]

 

[Purgent]

If there weren't thermal paste, no, your CPU would not be good with that.  Maybe at idle on desktop but not much beyond that. 

[Xaring]

Most of the thermal paste gets pushed around the heatsync and out anyways, as long as there is enough to fill up the microfissures on the heatsyncs, it will work fine.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

1 minute ago, Purgent said:

If there weren't thermal paste, no, your CPU would not be good with that.  Maybe at idle on desktop but not much beyond that. 

 

But as said it is purely for cooling? Like it won't have any grinding or whatever. It doesn't add some kind of protective lubrication or anything like that.

[Purgent]

2 minutes ago, TheMidnightNarwhal said:

 

But as said it is purely for cooling? Like it won't have any grinding or whatever. It doesn't add some kind of protective lubrication or anything like that.

Not at all.  Purely for efficient transfer of heat from cpu to heatsink. 

[Godlygamer23]

27 minutes ago, TheMidnightNarwhal said:

But as said it is purely for cooling? Like it won't have any grinding or whatever. It doesn't add some kind of protective lubrication or anything like that.

The idea behind thermal paste is to fill in microscopic bumps that may be present on the CPU or GPU heatspreader. Some thermal pastes are also thermally conductive due to the composition, which is why some pastes outperform others, like IC Diamond. Ideally, you only want a thin layer of paste on the surface of the CPU or GPU.

[SageOfSpice]

Thermal paste otherwise known as thermal interface material, or TIM, was designed to serve as a medium between two topographically asymmetrical surfaces for the purpose of increasing the surface area of contact, and thus increasing efficiency with which heat can be transferred across said surfaces.