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thermal paste suggestion

O

omghaxcode

Senior member
anyone know of some good stuff I should be using? I have some antec formula 6 I won at a LAN but apparently it's pretty awful to work with.
 
I took the plunge with Liquid Metal Pro a couple weeks ago and have been quite impressed with it. It's not the easiest to work with, but who really cares. You apply it once and done. I saw a minimum of a 6C drop under load over AS5 which is what I was using before.
 
MX-4 is what I use. It is best balance of price/performance/ease of use. It requires no burn-in time and lasts 8 years.
 
The thermal paste testing done by skineelabs is I think the most comprehensive to date. I got used to AS5, still used a big tube after 6-7yrs from when I bought it and it worked perfectly so the shelf life is quite long. I switched to MX4 because AS5 is capacitative and a little messy to work with and has a very long break in period.
 
I picked up some Phobya HeGrease Extreme because a thermal paste roundup placed it in the top 3 (behind the liquid metal stuff) and it was very cheap.
 
I'm using the Noctua NT-H1 currently on my system. Came with the D14 HSF. I have used MX4 before and MX4 is a little thicker than the Noctua stuff. Probably no difference overall.
 
Thread maybe belongs in "Cases/Cooling," but no complaints.

I'm just surprised that this topic keeps bubbling up over the last few years.

It all boils (ha! pun!) down to thermal resistance.

I think it was almost five years ago -- six months after the release of IC Diamond -- that I actually ran tests at controlled room-ambient to compare AS5 and IC Diamond.

You get so many degrees improvement using the diamond paste -- I think I was able to prove something between 2C and 5C. It depends on the thermal wattage being generated under load conditions . . . so it's "something" more . . . or less . . .

You get again 1 or 2C improvement over IC Diamond for using the metal products like Indigo Xtreme, Coollaboratory pads -- probably the liquid metal pro.

If your IHS is nickel-plated (and it is . . . ) and your heatsink base is nickel-plated, you can probably get up to a 5C improvement for each surface lapped . . . . which becomes another issue if you worry about warranties and resales.

And again -- these numbers in degrees C depend on how much thermal wattage your processor puts out at your favored over-clock setting. I think my numbers were based on a 95W TDP processor that was over-clocked to generate something between 115 and 120W . . . .
 
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