Arctic Silver 5 or Noctua heatsink bundled thermal paste?

[Raswan]

So I bought a NH-D9L heatsink from Noctua, and it appears in the box here that they also included thermal paste. I also just got a fresh tube of Arctic Silver 5, as I'd not realized Noctua would include one.

Is there going to be a practical difference between the two? What kind of reputation does the Noctua paste have?

 

[thesmokingman]

AS5 is ancient. The Noctua is actually a very good paste.

http://forum.hwbot.org/showthread.php?t=71658

 

[Deders]

Noctua paste has a great reputation, particularly NT H1. I would use this over AS5.

AS5 also maintains a good reputation but it is mostly from back in the day when it did outperform most other pastes. Things have moved on since then and although it is still a stalwart paste with good performance, I've had much better temps from using MX4 instead, and usually Noctua NT H1 outperforms even MX4 by a small margin.

 

[MongGrel]

Noctua.

I always use NT H1 personally myself, haven't used AS5 in over a decade here at any rate.

 

[Raswan]

Well, clearly I've dated myself with the AS5. Ten years ago is almost surely the last time I bought new stuff for a build. Guess I've got a 7.99 tube of it for nothing. I'll use the Noctua stuff. Thanks a bunch everyone.