If you see areas of gray looking material on a copper plate the thermal paste has already been applied.
Thermal paste already on heat sink.
Some heat sinks will actually come with thermal paste already applied in this case.
A layer of thermal paste or thermal grease will form a complete coating over the top of the component.
Thermal paste is applied to the cpu and heat sinks to improve their ability to cool down and conduct heat efficiently.
With a pretty sufficient 8 5w mk thermal conductivity rating gc extreme has got all the capacity to handle efficiently and transfer it to the heat sink from your gpu.
A good heat sink can be crippled by a mismatched thermal compound.
If you are looking for a thermal paste specifically for your graphics processor or graphics card you must go for gelid gc extreme thermal paste.
Top comment no mess no fuss got the job done the thermal paste works as it should it was the only one bestbuy near me sold a bit more than i wanted to spend on paste but it does the trick doing maintenance on computer worked great after removing cooling fan and cleaning fan motor heat sink i applied the thermal paste and used the center drop method the compound was the proper.
Sometimes you actually don t need to apply thermal paste if you bought a cpu heat sink combo.
Arctic mx 4 8 grams thermal compound paste carbon based high performance heatsink paste thermal compound cpu for all coolers thermal interface material 4 8 out of 5 stars 3 018 11 99 11.
It s really easy to spot too.
Laird thermal paste image source.
There s no need to add more.
Thermal paste is a paste that contains either silicone and zinc oxide the cheaper versions or silver ceramic the more expensive ones.
This is the part of the cpu that is still exposed after being installed in a motherboard and is the surface to which you apply thermal paste.
A good match between cooler and paste can achieve more than just blindly choosing an expensive thermal compound.
This provides much better heat transfer to the heat sink.