The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
You do NEED a TIM(Thermal Interface Material). Whether it be Arctic Silver 5, intel thermal paste, or a thermal pad. It really doesn't matter that much with a laptop. Unless your stock TIM isn't transferring heat. A good TIM application is more important that what specific TIM you use. Except thermal pads suck.
Some places will use AS5 for free(such as G2P) and others will charge an extra $50 for it. When you do not choose this, they will ship your notebook with the stock intel/Asus TIM.
The thermal paste is recommended to have, but the heat sink already come with this. Without this, the cpu will be overheat and the machine will shut down itself.
Cheers
so basically,I have to apply this paste,and if i don't i will burn out my laptop?
I have had dells before but they dont require any paste.How often do I have to keep applying?I find that very annoying I have to keep applying paste.
You can fry your cpu without a TIM. You don't need to reapply it. As long as you do it right the first time. If you buy your laptop and have it assembled by your reseller, you won't have to apply a TIM. Your dell does have a TIM. Probably a thermal pad. Possibly a "paste".
All recent processors need a TIM to transfer heat from the processor to the heatsink. Pretty much every computer you are likely to see today uses some kind of paste or a pad.
Just do a quick google search for "thermal interface material". You'll find all you'll ever need to know about thermal pastes and pads.
My suggestion... If you're not sure what thermal paste is, or what the thermal pads are... either don't put it together yourself, or, just use the stock pads that come on the heatsink. I did that and they work fine. All you do is carefully pull the thin layer of plastic off them. They're already attached to the heatsink.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
