Thermal paste...

[R.C.Anderson]

Got a watercooling setup on the way, but just remembered I didn't add any thermal paste to the order.

I still have some of the Noctua stuff that came with my heatsink (D14), it's probably about 9-10 months old now, would that still be ok & perform well? Or should I buy some other stuff, if so, which stuff should I go for? (I need it for both my CPU & GPU)

 

[Justintime]

It'll be fine.

 

[p5-]

I'm still using a tube of AS5 from around 2005. Seems ok to me!

 

[SFFNoob]

Should be fine, used their coolers with it, gave decent temps!

Also have a tube of MX-2 thats 3 years old (got a big tube for some reason at the time), been using that on a couple of recent builds, nice temps IMO.

 

[R.C.Anderson]

Ah ok, I'll probably just stick with what I have then.

Although I remember something about you shouldn't use conductive paste on GFX cards (or atleast you should be very careful if you do), and I wasn't sure if the Noctua stuff is conductive or not?

 

[JonJ678]

I'm using "liquid pro", a gallium based alloy that melts at room temperature, on my 8800gt. That's definitely conductive, and has caused no problems that I'm aware of.

Noctua's grease wont be appreciably conductive. It'll be slightly capacitive, but then all the greases are. It's generally not something to worry about. Try not to splash it on the circuit boards, and keep it away from the cpu pins and you'll be fine.