Best CPU Thermal Paste

I am about to pull the plug on a silicon lottery 8700k rated at 5.1Ghz and a water cooling setup. What paste or thermal solution will give me the best temps?

 

Community favourites tend to be Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and Phobya NanoGrease Extreme for slightly lower tension mounting. How often you need to repaste also depends on the viscosity of the paste and how exposed it gets to air (mounting tension & surfaces). You can achieve even better results using liquid metal, but that requires planning as to how you want to wall it off to make sure it doesn't run off the sides of the heat spreader and wreak havoc. The gains aren't as significant as in a notebook anyway, because in a desktop you have proper mounting with smooth surfaces, so I'd say save yourself the hassle and get non-conductive paste.

Feel free to post pictures once you have your water-cooling setup up and running.

 

I always find the post where people are discussing which thermal paste is the best but I cannot find that much post relating longevity of those pastes in different scenarios/applications (CPU, GPU, Notebook, Desktop, etc.). Is there any word about the longevity of these liquid metal high-end solutions?

 

There is also an interesting new graphite cooling pad by Innovation Cooling on the market, that is probably worth to consider.

 

It doesn't do well on laptops and also fails on desktops when compared to something like Kryonaut, I wouldn't abandon traditional paste just yet.

 

It worked for some when use as a shim. An interesting read. enjoy...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...mal-pad-available-for-test-and-review.815439/

 

It only really worked as shim when coated/soaked with liquid metal, otherwise it was underwhelming.

 

You can't coat/soak graphite pad with LM, it'll slide right off due to the pad's hydrophobic nature. You have to sandwich the pad between two surfaces that have LM applied to them.

 

I've used just grey thermal paste for my CPU and so far it has worked fine. I have Grey paste and Fan setup and have no thermal overload issues.

 

Delidding is essential. Use LM between the IHS and die, sand it to a mirror finish on the top, and to the copper on the bottom. Then flatten and sand the bottom of the IHS so it has a very small gap between surfaces. After all that, use the same finish in the opposite direction on the Heatsink and then use LM cryonaut between both. That'll be the ideal and best case. Even buy a copper IHS - https://rockitcool.myshopify.com/products/copper-ihs-for-lga-1150-1151

 

If you want a "set it and forget it" thermal paste, I would recommend arctic MX-4. It will likely last the lifetime of your machine in a wide array of climates and is high quite high specs. Definitely a well balanced compound and one I would recommend if making a rig for someone else that is not so tech savvy and won't be opening it up to service the machine. The stuff is fairly runny though, so you have to be careful when applying it.

 

The best thermal paste a rtic Cooling MX-4 . I read a lot about this paste , everybody use this.

 

Not quite everybody - http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...nd-apply-traditional-and-liquid-metal.806840/

 

Maybe put in a search in the forum. I'm sure you will get some results. Notebooks much worse cooling (low pressure - ****y HS fits) ain't the same as in desktops.

+rep

 

Yep...

One more for @zsolti900 - http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...e-recommendations-update-thermal-pads.796820/

 

I use Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut on my desktop and IC Diamond on my laptops, other than these two; I'd also highly recommend Arctic Silver 5 and Noctua NT-H1.