Even though a dizzying array of different thermal pastes is available — some blends have been around for over a decade — new formulations still come to market at a surprising pace. Long-time PC cooler maker NZXT recently entered the market with its first paste, the not-very-excitingly named NZXT High-Performance Thermal Paste. Cooler Master introduced a new purple CryoFuze, and Alphacool unveiled its Apex thermal paste. Cooling mainstay Corsair also has a new XTM70 blend that will be heading to our test bench soon, and Gelid has recently released its GC-4 Thermal Paste, showing that the TIM market is still thriving. And yeah they were not sponsored by/for the frame, but they repeatedly were sponsored by/for the thermal paste.You said sponsored, they aren't sponsored. They run ads from various manufacturers, that's different. I de-dusted this 3 times in the meantime, so it's not a dust clog effect, and fresh paste made it again into a comfortable palm rest. In terms of specifications, the Cooler Master MasteGel Regular thermal paste has a thermal conductivity of 5 W/mk, which is more in line with a lot of other options mentioned in this collection. The company also sells a premium version of this particular paste with thermal conductivity of 11 W/mk. This paste is grey in color and its density is 2.5 g. We had absolutely no issues applying the paste on the CPU. The overall performance of the solution has also been pretty solid as we've encountered no abnormalities in the CPU temps. We've used this particular paste for many of our builds and it's been a reliable option. Thermal compounds might always be compared and debated over, but the simple fact remains: PC system building needs thermal compounds to effectively dissipate thermal loads. Without them, our beloved gaming and content-producing machines would struggle to keep components cool during heated frag sessions, heavy workstation computations, or just simply browsing the web.

ZoneDymohere's hoping for some tests of this on the forum or by TPU themselves, GN is I think Thermal Grizzly sponsored so its a bit off for them to test itGN doesn't test thermal compounds. Running ads doesn't mean they are biased towards TG. Just look at their coverage of LGA1700 frames. It’s no surprise that the liquid metal compounds once again sit atop the thermal comparison. Still, a 6C difference between all 15 thermal compounds tested shows there isn’t a lot of variation, even with a 360 all-in-one cooler with a push+pull fan setup for performance. Small differences in temperatures jostle the chart a bit, but overall the more budget-friendly compounds show much more promising performance value due to relatively close load ranges. We see a trend that most good and great thermal compounds perform very similarly, but might be worlds apart in price per gram. I appreciate the work that has been put into this test, where one can see comparison for most known products. And yeah they were not sponsored by/for the frame, but they repeatedly were sponsored by/for the thermal paste.We're also putting a new take on an old approach to the test — thermal pads. These pads can be used as TIM and come as a single sheet you simply apply to your heatsink, with Thermaltake's Heilos Pad being the first new thermal pad entrant to see our test bed in the coming weeks. The results for gpu applications would be different though, as the more viscous pastes would have an edge here - at least from what I've read so far. ARCTIC made a conscious decision not to specify any values for the thermal conductivity of its thermal paste and thermal pads because many manufacturers invent, artificially inflate or embellish this value. Thermal paste has a thermal conductivity of 1 to 4 W/mK. Values outside of this range, such as 12.5 W/mK, are at odds with the truth. Arctic halts troublesome MX-5 thermal paste; MX-6 successor spotted at almost three times the price The modus operandi has been the same: spread out a grain of rice with thermal paste, mount a heatsink, leave it on for 20 minutes at rest, Prime95 for 10 minutes, turn off the computer for 10 minutes and, with this, the paste is settled. Then we turn on the PC again and stress the processor with Prime95 for 10 minutes, capturing the maximum temperature that any of the cores has had.

I installed a CPU yesterday and I had to use my MX-4. A couple hours later the MX-6 arrived and I'm certainly not in the mood fo reapply paste if it's not going to be a 5-10C improvement. CoolLaboratory Liquid Pro is a liquid metal compound that is applied with a syringe and capillary tip to the CPU integrated heat spreader, and it ships with a scouring pad and alcohol swab for prep and cleanup. ChomiqGN doesn't test thermal compounds. Running ads doesn't mean they are biased towards TG. Just look at their coverage of LGA1700 frames.im not saying they are biased, its just not something, I would think even they themselves would say, that should be done by them, being in their position. We tested each thermal paste with a low-tension air cooler mount, high-tension air cooler mount, and a high-tension AIO liquid cooler mount. Each application was given a 1-hour burn-in using Prime95 with ten load and cooling cycles over the course of the hour; six minutes each with a ten-second cool-down between. Each testing load session was then executed for a one-hour load period, again using Prime95. The dispersion is quite good, denoting that it is not as viscous as it seemed to us in the first instance, especially when we have not applied as much pressure as a heatsink will apply to the processor and, in fact, we have put much more thermal paste on the paper of the which we will cast on the IHS of the processor normally.Got a ton of different answers but OCN was all about CoolerMaster Gel, Thermalright, and Thermal Grizzly.

For a compound that costs less than half as much as leading competitors , Phobya's Liquid Metal Compound LM offers impressive performance, often besting the the CoolLaboratory Liquid Pro or Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut in our tests. I haven't added mx-6 to my x299 rig yet but it's on my todo list plus some loop adjustments/ flush the loop and use mayhems XT-1 clear fluid to it's custom loop no air cooler on this rig. regarding the thermal aste application, I used the 'rice grain size' in the middle for so long. It never spreads to the corners when you do so.Thermal paste can go by many names, such as "thermal compound," "thermal grease," or "TIM" (Thermal Interface Material), but they all have the same purpose — to help keep your chip cool by ensuring that heat passes efficiently from the CPU to the cooler. Delta T (Temp difference between CPU and Cooler) = Thermal Resistance x Energy (to be transferred from CPU to Cooler)