Toothpaste for a Celeron CPU ?

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geek9pm

Geek Trainee
Can I put toothpaste on top of a Clleron CPU ?
A new motherboard came w/o a CPU and I tried my old Pentium 4 w/o a heat sink and it went for about two mins before shut down. Lately it has been very cold here in California.
I ordered a used Celeron 2.3 ghz with a heat sink, but I was wondering what to do if there is no goo on the heat sink. I don’t want this barebones project to have cost overruns, so I don’t want to go to a Radio Shack and pay a lot of money for something that looks like toothpaste. So, can’t I just use some toothpaste if needed? Or is it better to try nothing? Somewhere I read that you could do this. :O
 
Toothpaste for a Clleron CPU ?

No thermal compound is not toothpaste. I've never heard of it being similar to toothpaste. It's not really expensive for a little tube of thermal paste, only a few dollars I'd expect. You don't need any of the expensive stuff.

You may even be able to run it without thermal compound, but it may run a little hotter than expected.
 
Toothpaste for a Clleron CPU ?

If you bought a retail (boxed) Celeron, then there should be a heatsink included which will have a thermal pad attached to the bottom.
This means you dont need to mess around at all with getting the right layer of thermal paste, you just stick the heatsink onto the CPU (don't put anything on it) and then you're good to go.

Make sure you get the heatsink on properly the first time, i ruined a thermal pad once by powering up the system then realising that the heatsink wasn't firmly attached - when i lifted it the thermal pad ripped.
 
Toothpaste for a Clleron CPU ?

You can try it, but it's not recommended. Vodka and water look the same too (clear)...however, their composition is vastly different. Toothpaste does not have the same thermal transfer capabilities as thermal paste. I would say that it's more likely to act as an insulator than anything else, which wouldn't do you any good.

Believe me, if toothpaste was a viable alternative to thermal paste, there's crazy enough cooling nuts that would've discovered this already.
 
Toothpaste for a Clleron CPU ?

Ok, is there an easy was I can monitor the temps without rebooting and going into the BIOS? This is an old Intel motherboards and it has three zone monitors in the BIOS, but I don't know how to read them in windows and make a chart.
 
Toothpaste for a Clleron CPU ?

Thermal Dynamics is not my field of study. Some brief research shows that some toothpaste has base of Glycerin and PEG, ( PolyEthylene Glycol). Both componds have good thermal transfert. PEG has many forms and one kind is used in your car radiator. Also, Glycerin is sometimes used as an antifreeze
From Google search.
When I get the Celeron chip I will see if it does not have goo on it I will try a high Gllycerin content Colgate Gel.
 
Toothpaste for a Clleron CPU ?

Yeah, that would be great to hear of your experiment. I know some guys with watercooling rigs use a water/antifreeze mixture, so the glycol argument makes sense. I don't think the rule for apply paste differ, since the paste is just there to fill in the micro gaps, and that over applying the stuff will act as an insulator rather than transfer the heat.

You can clean off thermal pads and paste with isopropyl alcohol.
 
Toothpaste for a Clleron CPU ?

I just did some tests using my old Pentium 4 1.4 GHZ CPU. With nothing, just the aluminum blcik with fan on, the CPU zone 1 got up to 159 F. Runs for hours taht way. With a very light coast of colgate blue gel, just nuf to cover most of the CPU top, the temp was down to 89 F even after an hour. That is a big diff. And yes, the thing was clean when doing the bare metal test and the fan was helop under pressure from the mout. This is an old Itel mobo with temp sensors on it. Have not tried the Celeron. The new mobo does not have temp sensors, I guess. Can not find it in the BIOS. Anyway, I put colgate on the celeron also. feels cool. And the case has a nice clean smell. :doh:
 
Toothpaste for a Clleron CPU ?

So there you go -

Arctic silver? :swear: that! I am going Colgate (well. next time I re-sit my cooler ;) )

31C with :swear: toothpaste? I am not getting this with my freezer and Ceramiq!

By the way, do Colgate know what they are missing on? :chk:
 
Off topic, I use Linux wshen i need it without instalations. I just boot up Puppy OS! Works every time! Easy way to change partition size or do a partition backup, even NTFS, but gives CHKDSK a fit.
 
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