Arctic Silver 5 Observations

Hey guys, my load temps were slowly going up and up since I got the laptop. Long story short, I took out my heatsink and it was extremely clean (Several months ago I removed the dust filters, but I use compressed air on it occasionally). I noticed most of the thermal compound was AROUND the chips (maybe 'melting' off due to my high temps), so I cleaned it up and applied Arctic Silver 5. I was mostly concerned with the GPU temp since my CPU temps were below 80 during any task except Prime+Furmark.

Here are the results (very close ambient temp in all cases):

Idle temps, old- coldest CPU 43C, GPU 47C
Idle temps, AS5- coldest CPU 42C, GPU 46C

Furmark 20 minutes, old- GPU 90C
Furmark 20 minutes, AS5- GPU 83C
*used to take 10 seconds to hit 80C- it now takes about 3 minutes*

Prime95 20 minutes, old- hottest CPU 71C
Prime95 20 minutes, AS5- hottest CPU 68C
*Furmark heats up the CPU a few degrees more than this*

Starcraft 2, old- GPU 86C (sorry, didn't bother with CPU)
Starcraft 2, AS5- GPU 80C

Left 4 Dead 2, old- GPU 94C, CPU 79C
Left 4 Dead 2, AS5- GPU 85C, CPU 76C

Prime95+Furmark, old- CPU Throttling at 5 mins 30 seconds, CPU temp 84/85C, GPU 98C
Prime95+Furmark, AS5- ran successfully for 30 mins. Max CPU temp 83C, GPU 92C

Also, I changed the paste 2 days ago- does it actually improve when it "cures" after 200ish hours? I did the spread method with heatsink tinting.

 

Ive always used AS5 in the past but recently i came across the Arctic Silver MX-3 and man, that's awesome.
I ditched AS5 for good because of MX3 features that honestly are a step forward into improving cooling.

- It doesnt have any conductive material at all, while AS5 cointains silver. That means if you applied carefully the TC but accidentally dropped a small blob of something in places that doesnt needs to be cooled, happens (almost lost a laptop due to this!)

- 200hrs break in time is insane, period. I dont have such time and i dont use my lappy 24/7 because due to work im at home for less than 4 hours a day. MX3 needs no break in, but thats also not true, you need around 2 hours.

Ive benched alot my systems with and without AS5 and w/wo MX3. I have significant performance drop with MX3 and a general cooler system than AS5.

Also the paste is easy to spread (i use your same method).

Just google around and read the reviews. On my desktop OCed cpu i lost 5-7c in full load (was 80-83m now 73c) and on my current laptops its the same thing.

Clearly a winner for me, i highly recommend it!

 

Just applied AS5 for the first time ever last night, noticed an IMMEDIATE drop at idle of 7c!! I have my lappy going at least 16 hours a day, if not more, so I can't wait to see how much further they drop at 200hrs!

 

The laptop survived 30 minutes of Prime95 (Torture Test, 8 threads, small FFTs) + Furmark. My config is i7 720QM with 4670. Ambient temp 70F. WLED screen on min brightness, keyboard lighting off.

HWMONITOR max temps- CPU 81C 81C 81C 83C
GPU 92C

The minor blemishes of the 12.00 multiplier seem to be caused by background activity- I restarted 10 minutes before I began testing.

Note:If I turn the keyboard backlight on during this test it makes enough of a power difference to lower the multiplier due to not having enough power for the CPU.