do I need thermal grease to install CPU?

My new Athlon 64 3500 chip, will I need thermal grease to apply to heatsink fan and chip upon installation?

 

In a word yes.

thermal paste is not a waste of time.

 

If I am not mistaken some AMD processors have a thermal pad already on them. You just remove the sheeting over and stick your heatsink to it that way. This is assuming that pad is there, if not you want to use the grease.

 

If you go for the grease.. get 'Artic Silver'' and go to there site for full graphical instructions on how to administer.

http://www.arcticsilver.com

 

Thermal paste is nececary these days, thermal pads being the bare minimum .

 

I havent seen a CPU yet with a thermal pad on it. Usually a stock heastsink will have the thermal pad on the bottom of it.

Either you meant that, or you're confusing it with the integrated heat spreader, which is just the metal covering on the CPU like Intel has been doing for a while.

in any case, you absolutely need some kind of thermal compound. The best and commonly recommended one is Arcitc Silver 5.

 

Do you need to remove the thermal pad on the heatsink then? or apply the stuff around it?

 

if you are going to use a separate thermal compound like Arctic Silver, then yes you would need to remove the thermal pad form the heatsink and clean it with isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol, and dry it with a linkt free cloth.

then you can apply the thermal compound and put on the heatsink.