Best thermal paste substitutes

What are the best substitutes for thermal paste?

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Maybe you were looking forward to upgrading your CPU cooler, only to be disappointed upon realizing you’d have to re-paste the processor’s IHS.

Maybe you’re in a pinch and need to use your overheating computer but don’t have any thermal paste on hand.

Or, maybe you’re just interested in some PC-building shenanigans.

Either way, on this page, you’ll find a few substances that can technically be used as a temporary alternative to thermal paste, although I can’t recommend you do.

What makes a good thermal paste substitute?

Thermal paste, a thermally conductive grey liquid, rests between the surfaces of a microprocessor’s IHS (integrated heat spreader) and cooler heatsink.

You see, both the heatsink and the IHS are not absolutely perfect pieces of machinery; they have tiny cracks on their surfaces.

When the two surfaces are pressed together during the mounting of the cooler, tiny air pockets form inside these cracks. Air is a poor insulator of heat, so the air pockets end up slowing down heat transfer considerably.

Thermal paste fills up these cracks and gaps so that heat can travel from the IHS to the heatsink more efficiently.

Any thermal paste alternative would have to do the same thing. It would need similar properties to thermal paste (consistency, thermal conductivity, etc.) to facilitate heat transfer in the same way.

Best thermal paste alternatives

These alternatives aren’t as effective as thermal paste, but you could use them in a pinch to prevent your CPU from overheating.

Thermal pads

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If you don’t have any thermal paste, thermal pads are the next best thing. If you must use a substitute, I recommend using a thermal pad, since it’s designed to transfer heat between components.

Pads are sort of like thermal paste, only less effective, due to the fact that their solid nature prevents them from filling up air bubbles the same way thermal paste can.

Still, unlike many of the other liquid substitutes you’ll hear about online and on social media, a thermal pad won’t melt away and cause damage to your CPU or motherboard.

They also have great longevity. If you have a low-power microprocessor that doesn’t need the most efficient cooling to be kept under normal temperatures, you could probably get away with using a thermal pad instead of paste.

Toothpaste

Next, we have toothpaste. At first glance it does seem like toothpaste could potentially share some properties with thermal paste. And it does – both liquids don’t differ too much in terms of their consistency.

Thermal paste is more conductive, of course. But toothpaste will prevent your CPU from overheating and shutting down automatically, which means you can use it in a pinch.

The problem here is that toothpastes have incredible variation from brand to brand, and tube to tube. The results you get will depend on your particular toothpaste.

There’s also the fact that toothpaste has fluoride, which is a corrosive element. While the fluoride isn’t concentrated enough to cause remarkable damage to the IHS or the heatsink, it could leave behind some marks.

If you do use toothpaste, don’t expect it to last very long. It can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few days before drying up entirely, but no longer.

Aluminum powder mixed with Petroleum Jelly

Aluminium powder has excellent thermal conductivity, and petroleum jelly (or Vaseline) doesn’t dry up quickly under heat stress. Combine the two thoroughly, and you get a gooey substance that you can use as a temporary substitute for thermal paste.

You will need to blend the aluminium powder and the Vaseline for about 10 minutes to end up with a usable mixture.