Thermal paste is nothing new, and really, nothing special. It is just a bit of specialized goop that is used to fill in the tiny air gap between a processor and a heat sink so that heat is transmitted efficiently.
A typical CPU or GPU has a processor mounted on a circuit board and a "lid" of metal bonded to the circuit board in a thermally efficient way. However, if power is applied to a CPU without an additional heatsink the temperature will typically rise to boiling point in a few seconds. The processor will shut down to protect itself.
Thermal paste to the rescue!
Well, thermal paste and a honking great heatsink and usually a high powered, temperature controlled fan. The paste is applied to the processor lid, just a small pea of it, and then as the heatsink and fan assembly is clamped down, the paste spreads into a thin laminar to take up manufacturing tolerances and provide efficient heat transfer.
Unfortunately, the trend for home computers is for temperatures to continue to rise as transistors increase due to higher density, operating frequencies increase to make the machines faster and hotter. This means that solutions to cool our gaming computers are becoming more complex, more fans more noise, even water cooling is not passive, it requires air extraction. Thermal paste is part of the solution in the near term, but I hope that in the future the industry will continue down the road of power efficiency, reduce operating temperatures and the need for fan noise while we are playing our silly games.
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