Gadgetory

do you really need that goopy gray weird smelling paste on your CPU can't we just sit our impressive-looking heatsinks on top of our processors and be done with it no not even remotely and here's why many heat sinks don't sit flat against your CPU and in some cases with good reason but that might be for another video rather they're either concave or convex so there's a fair amount of space where your heatsink and processor aren't making proper contact also even though the top of your CPU or the bottom of your heatsink might look perfectly smooth even shiny in some cases they're actually rougher at the microscopic level than you might think and as a result they don't actually sit completely flush against each other this means that without thermal compound air pockets exist between your CPU and your heatsink so why is that a problem well it turns out that even though hot or cold air makes dramatic difference in how your body feels as the seasons change air is actually a very poor conductor of heat in general if you don't believe me try holding a stake an inch above a frying pan instead of placing it inside and let me know how that goes for you so thermal paste fills these would be air gaps so that your heatsink and CPU are touching more directly and the good stuff anyways is also made from special materials that help conduct heat properly so that it can go up into your heatsink so while you can use toothpaste as thermal compound to save money you probably really shouldn't for this to work best the conducting material and thermal paste is usually some sort of metal with more expensive varieties containing things like powdered silver and while this makes sense since metal conducts heat quite well it used to cause problems for novice builders who put on too much thermal compound because metal paste can also end up being electrically conductive oops fortunately it's less of an issue these days with higher-quality compounds like Arctic silver 5 managing to remain non conductive in spite of using metal though you still need to keep it away from metal contacts and traces as it is mildly positive which can still be a problem but if you want to be really safe you can buy thermal paste that contains no metal at all these are typically made of ceramic though more exotic solutions that contain things like diamonds do exist although they sadly won't add a bling factor to your rig they will do a decent job of keeping your processor cool however the downside of these is that you typically won't get quite the same level of performance as you would with a more metallic based pace but high-quality ceramics are not only cheaper they will also only set you back by a few degrees in most cases and are actually the best option for exotic sub-zero cooling which you can check out here and of course if you want to avoid messes entirely you can get thermal pads usually just made of silicone which just sits squished between your heatsink and whatever you're trying to cool you commonly see these on small graphics card components since there's no danger of leakage but since they can't get down into the micro crevices as well as paste performance won't be nearly as good so you don't see them on CPUs or the actual specific GPU very often whatever you do though make sure you aren't accidentally buying thermal adhesive these glues or epoxies permanently bond two things together this stuff used to be somewhat common in certain PC components but has now been mostly relegated to smaller electronics that aren't meant to be taken apart nonetheless it's still easy to buy so make sure you're getting the right stuff if you don't want to end up stuck without a working CPU I'll show myself out that was a little brutal if you're not a member of Dollar Shave Club yet join today and get your first month of razors for free they deliver amazing razors directly to your door membership means that you can probably afford to shave with a fresh blade anytime you want which is fantastic you'll get a first-class shave when you use the executive blade without hurting your wallet and you can also use dr. Carver's shave butter using it with the executive blade creates a wonderfully smooth shave they shipped to the US Canada on Australia so head over to dollarshaveclub.com slash Linus to give it a try for free if you guys like the you like it or dislike it if you don't like it or whatever if you're like this topic sucked I have a good idea for another one let us know down below and give us a comment and whatever else you want to do also check our channel superfund because they are super fun and I'll see you next time