Reinstall CPU = thermal paste?

[jwt]

I'm selling my PowerMac, which was upgraded with an aftermarket CPU. I've decided to reinstall the original CPU and sell the PowerMac and upgrade separately. I noticed that Apple didn't use thermal paste between the CPU and heat sink, and I was wondering if I should do the same or go and buy a tube of Arctic Silver. Help.

[martinlk]

They definitely did use some kind of thermal compound. Perhaps a thermal pad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_pad_%28computing%29)? Using no thermal compound would cause your CPU to overheat almost instantly (I assume). So yes, just put a thin layer of thermal paste on there. You definitely would not want to run without a thermal compound!

Edit: if they did use a thermal pad, you should be able to see some of it stuck to the heatsink. Remember to clean that off with some alcohol before proceeding.

[Firefly2002]

They did used to use thermal pads with PowerMacs. Never had any problems with any of it sticking to the die, though. You can also apply thermal grease to get it to run a little better.

I was running the original 300 MHz G3 in my Beige at 366 MHz for a while (not bad for a 250 nm process; that's basically like clocking a Mac Pro from 3 GHz to 3.66 GHz ;))