Is this thermal grease OK?

Hey all!

I got my new i7 920XM CPU from Shirley on eBay today and it came with a little 0.5g tube of thermal grease - would it be okay to use?

I assume it would be pretty cheap and nasty stuff and from what I've seen, it's a bit of a mission to get the laptop dismantled enough to replace the CPU so I don't want to go through all that and use crappy thermal paste.

Check out the attached image and let me know if it's crap

Thanks all

 

I'm not sure but I personally use MX-3 or MX-4.

 

I've got some of that, didn't use it yet.

If you don't take apart your notebook a lot, might as well use some known good paste.

MX-3/4 is great.

 

Hi

Not sure about that stuff, but from what I understand the white grease is usually the lower range stuff, purely ceramic bassed, it will definitely work better than nothing .

I used MX-4, as other have mentions, worked really well and was easy to apply, so if you don't want to do many experiments with grease, use MX-4 not to expensive either.

 

i would not skimp on the paste that would be like running a Ferrari on snow tires...i would get at least AS5 since that should be easy to find locally or any other high performance paste like ocz freeze, tx-4 or shin etsu. The m17x will take you like 1hr to replace the cpu if you have never done it before and is not a fun task to do just to replace paste. The 920xm runs hot and when you overclock it and increase the power to the chip you can make it hit thermal throttling. If you are not doing a retention mod on the cpu then i would at least change out the paste to something decent to help keep temps down.

Edit:


here you go


http://forum.notebookreview.com/6816789-post93.html

 

Thanks for all the great info - it looks like I can get AS5 and MX-3/4 pretty easy from my local retailer. They look to be about the same price, are they basically the same performance?

What's the retention mod you mentioned faiz? I'm not planning to overclock the CPU all that much at the moment, just a little tweak here and there - is the retention mod still worth it?

 

Not sure about the performance, but AS5 is capacitive where MX-4 is not, And you should go for MX4 instead of MX3 as its has a slightly better thermal conductivity and is easier to apply.

You can do a search on this forum for more info on the retention clip mod, it under one of the cooling mod threads.

Its risky and some have damaged their CPU's so proceed with much caution.

 

I would choose Mx-4.. I tried As5 on my gpus, and did it 7 times before i got around 6 degrees lower. And that was mostly because i bended the clips up a bit.. When i used Mx-4 i bended the clips back so it was in its original shape and strangely that did another 7 degrees.. So before paste i had 90 degrees in furmark . And now with Mx-4, 77 degrees..

 

So.... is it better to be capacitive or not? If I remember my electronics from school (which was a long time ago btw lol), being capacitive means that it can build/store a (slight) voltage over time? Provided I didn't totally screw up the meaning of "capacitive" I assume it would be better if it didn't do that?

If that's the case it sounds like MX-4 is the winner

Just before I grab some, I just want to make sure I'm getting the right stuff:

Is this the MX-4 that you guys are talking about?

If I get some now it should (hopefully) turn up around the same time as my M17x

 

I think Blueneon meant conductive, which AS5 is. I use MX-3 or MX-4 on my CPU and GPU dies exclusively because of their great thermal properties and non-conductive nature.

 

AS5 should be a last ditch effort right before the thermal paste Shirley sent you. If you can get better paste than that is your best bet. Stick with MX4 if you can find it. If mx4 is not available get the next best paste and leave AS5 last as it is capacitive and if not applied carefully can cause issues to your system. Here is the link for retention mod for CPU and GPU but for now i would stick with just using paste and get to learn the new cpu and the power along with heat and find out if you really need extreme measures. A good paste will give you 8-12 degree drop if not more.

M17x-R2 Wikia Forum • View topic - Retention mod + more on CPU = great temps (at least for me)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...g-mod-huge-improvement.html?highlight=thermal

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/523915-pics-cooling-mods-done-tx-4-clip-mod.html

 

No it's capacitive, not conductive.

Arctic Silver Incorporated - Arctic Silver 5

 

Non Capacitive is better, if some of the paste drips off the top on the GPU (for example) and lands across the pins you'll hace a small capacitor across the pins, which is usually not a good thing.