Forum Review - Nanotherm PCM+ vs. AS3

[Nanotherm]

For all those who are not yet familiar with the performance of the new Nanotherm PCM+ thermal interface material, you may to read this independent review thread we received today from a Forum member and (former) AS user over at Overclockers.com - http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showt...threadid=212837. One of your own Forum members contacted us for samples and will also be testing the Nanotherm thermal compounds vs. the competition and should be posting the results on this Forum soon.

 

[m1ke101]

hey there wanted to know where I can get some

 

[Corporate Thug]

i tried the generic stuff that came with my slk800, then i tried AS3, and recently i tried ceramique. all the temps were +/- 1 C of the generic stuff which leads me to believe that they are all practically the same

 

[RalfHutter]

Originally posted by: shady06
i tried the generic stuff that came with my slk800, then i tried AS3, and recently i tried ceramique. all the temps were +/- 1 C of the generic stuff which leads me to believe that they are all practically the same

Yeah, well apparently this Nanotherm is the latest "miracle" thermal paste, following in the footsteps of Shin-Etsu.

It's so thin that it comes in a little squeeze bottle so it's developers must have been listening to people bitch about how hard it is to apply Shin-Etsu.

 

[Davegod]

RalfHutter this is different stuff completely, that is if you're thinking of this nano paste which really does promise to be Something a Whole Lot Better, 70c/w is waaaaay better, we're talking better than solder. I also remember reading some lady came up with something with nanotubes or something which was meant to be better than solder, dunno if it's the same thing and cant see where I read it .

Nanotherm sell paste called "Ice" and "Blue", pretty much typical +/- 1C stuff. Shin-Etsu isnt miracle paste either btw, I use it myself and its no different to Artic Alumina and the like - not so you'd notice anyway. It IS non-conductive though, and the only paste officially approved by AMD, quite possibly for that reason.

FWIW I do find it sad when reps post on forums effectively to advertise - a marked contrast to AntecCSR btw, who seems only to respond directly to questions. Also the link doesnt work because it's copy+pasted from what I'm guessing is a prior posting on a VBB forum.

I doubt any typical forum member can give any remotely accurate "benchmark" of thermal paste, no matter how hard they tried, check http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm

 

[RalfHutter]

Originally posted by: Davegod
RalfHutter this is different stuff completely, that is if you're thinking of this nano paste which really does promise to be Something a Whole Lot Better, 70c/w is waaaaay better, we're talking better than solder. I also remember reading some lady came up with something with nanotubes or something which was meant to be better than solder, dunno if it's the same thing and cant see where I read it .

No, I'm talking aabout the Nanotherm stuff that's bieng pimped on various forums over the last week or two. It comes in a little squeeze bottle. The Nanotherm guy got it reviewed somewhere and has posted about it in several of the forums I read. There's an interesting thread about it at OCforums.

I'm comparing the hype about this to the hype about Shin-Etsu from about 6-9 moths ago. Basically there was one or two sites absolutely raving about how Shin-Etsu was the best TIM since sliced bread and there were a few others saying that all the TIMs are basically the same. Even now there doesn't seem to be too much of a consensus about Shin-Etsu. For all the people that have tried it, most seem to get similar or just slightly better results than ASIII, others get pretty good results but it certainly isn't the "Miracle TIM" that it was claimed to be at first. I just think it's interesting that this Nanotherm seems to be starting out the same way as Shin-Etsu did.

 

[Davegod]

Yeah I remember the Shin Etsu thing, I found a reasonable review and mentioned it in a post asking if anyone had tried it, myself and another guy bought some to see who the claims stacked up. While waiting for delivery i spotted more reviews of it, totally laughable claims like "CPU temp fell to 25C!!!11" (yet case temp is showing as 30C).

A lot of the most dodgy reviews seem to be related somewhat to chillblast.com, a UK site with forum that... has two of the dodgy article authors as high postcount members. I think at least one of them is associated with the company also. What is the only place in UK which sells Shin Etsu? You guessed it.

FWIW the shin etsu so far has been perfectly good paste, roughly on par with A.Alumina, though I dont have anything like the facilities here to do a thorough test (neither, I might add, do most of the goop roundup reviewers imo). IIRC the other guy also got quite good temps, but noted the shin etsu works out very expensive on the large intel heatspreader since he used an awful lot of the small tube.