Thermal paste is used in PCs for a very specific reason, but what if the highly technical substance was replaced with candy?
A Youtube short shows exactly what happens when someone uses a gelatin bear instead of thermal paste on their processor. PCs can be delicate machines, so great care should always be taken when putting them together. Each part should fit perfectly and be designed specifically for the PC. Unfortunately, the parts list rarely includes gelatin bears.
Thermal paste is used for a very specific reason. The thick gray liquid helps distribute the heat evenly so that the processor cooler can then cool the processor effectively. If a processor cooler or thermal paste is not functioning properly, due to improper placement or some other error, the processor can overheat and be severely damaged. A baked-on processor is absolutely no good and great care should be taken when configuring the components of a PC. A stray dot of thermal grease or an improperly installed cooler means that a multi-hundred dollar processor could be done and could put the computer at risk.
So what if there is no thermal paste on hand? Can other thick and sticky substances be used to disperse heat enough on a processor? Good, mr yester on YouTube decided to put the theory to the test. The video shows the PC builder gently placing a rubber bear on the processor once it is secured in its socket. Then the YouTuber takes a CPU fan cooler and pushes with more pressure than anyone would need for thermal paste, then tightens it up. What happens next is not at all surprising. As expected, the gummy bear heats up to the point of melting completely under the cooler.
Why didn’t a gummy bear work?
A gummy bear is absolutely no substitute for thermal paste. In fact, there shouldn’t even have been a gummy bear near the outdoor motherboard in the first place. Thermal paste is made up of very specific elements that allow the paste to retain its structure, even at high temperature. In the video, the processor hits 99 degrees Celsius or 210 Fahrenheit. Obviously, it’s insanely hot for a computer, meaning the gummy paste did nothing and started to melt down the sides, even finding its way into the socket. With a shortage of chips still plaguing the world, this hardly seems like a good idea.
Thermal paste also fills the tiny microscopic cracks and features of a processor and cooler baseplate, allowing heat to easily transfer from the processor to the cooler. It is more than likely that the small natural bubbles in the gummy bear making process did not help create efficient heat transfer. In fact, the gummy bear may have helped isolate the processor, letting it heat up until the software could no longer read the temperature. It doesn’t matter if it’s AMD or Intel as mentioned in the YouTube video don’t try this at home and always use thermal paste instead.
Source: mr yester / youtube
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