A good read about thermal pastes

Thermal transfer compound comparison

Best thermal paste? Hah.

 

Oh god, Vegemite.
I dreaded the smell and taste, over here in the land down under. However it may seem, quite suprised it did very well in the tests!

 

Toothpaste FTW.

 

lol Vegemite! After you repaste your CPU you can put some on your toast! Then you can brush your teeth after with the toothpaste. Geez that is hilarious.

 

Reminds me of the guy that sunk his whole computer rig in baby oil as a heat dispersion solution... its amazing what people can come up with

 

You mean this?

And I'm surprised the review in the original post hasn't been mentioned before. I've seen it long before coming to this thread.


EDIT: I've suddenly felt the itch to build an oil computer. Haha.

 

Anyway, I'm looking for a new notebook now and I'm falling for one with a Sandy Bridge processor and Nvidia Optimus technology on its GPU.

Some of the resellers offer the 'best' thermal pastes (IC Diamond 7 usually) and claim that it is very important, but I wonder how much. I have no doubt it would be better, but it's really crucial for a good performance notebook?
I'm not going to overclock it. I will not play games everyday. For the most of time of use, the Sandy Bridge should handle the tasks without much power. Sometimes it should run at full capacity, though.

Just would like some 'neutral' thoughts on this. Here where I live I don't have much options and if I go for the IC Diamond reseller I will have to give up of a better configuration from the other reseller, which don't offer a 'special' thermal paste.

 

Truthfully? I wouldn't bother. There's a good chance you might need to repaste yourself in a year or two anyway, and at that point, you can always swap and do it yourself. The really high quality stuff is really usually only necessary if you overclock or otherwise seriously stress your machine.

 

Yeah, it's quite what I thought...

And I've been reading about undervolting. Never tried it, but seems very interesting. What would you think of that on these new processors? (ok, maybe its the wrong thread heheh)
I will try it on my Core 2 Duo. I would like to decrease its temperature...

 

There is currently no known way to reliably undervolt core i processors (through software. Hardware is probably possible, but will depend heavily on specific models, and will probably require significant warranty voiding work, like soldering). C2D software undervolting is pretty well understood, though. I believe the 2 main current programs for it are RMClock (no longer supported, I think), and Throttlestop.

 

well, thanks very much for the enlightenment.

I wouldn't like to do anything that could harm my new notebook.
The older one could be of good use to try that

 

even though I skipped through the article, I LOLed at this:

"There's still some left in the tube! And I can still almost see the RAM slots! Squeeze harder! "

 

here fishy... fishy... fishy...







"mom!!! The fish is dead..."

"can I have the tank??"

 

Judicator and others who might want to give their thoughts, here is the final options I got to choose from: (from the only two resellers around here)

1. 2630QM, 4GB RAM, IC Diamond Thermal Paste and 2 years warranty

2. 2720QM, 6GB RAM, "surprise" thermal compound and 3 years warranty

On the other specs, both options are the same: Full HD screen, 500GB 7200 RPM HD, blue-ray reader, lame 42.84 Wh battery. It's the same Clevo chassis (W150HNQ), the first is a local Sager reseller and the other a local brand.

The price is about same (actually the second is 2% cheaper ).

I'm falling for the number two. Despite the surprise element, they have a good fame among clients (most are more game enthusiasts than I) and a very nice warranty. Also, I suppose I will not stress the CPU and GPU that much on my regular basis...

What do you think?

 

Or this: Hardcore Computer | Desktops | Reactor X

 

Yeeeeah... DIY would be so much cheaper, haha.

I would go with #2 as well. Better CPU (right? I'm still not familiar with SB numbering) and thermal paste can easily be done aftermarket if it's not to your satisfaction.

EDIT: By the way, when they say "surprise thermal paste" does that mean stock paste or that they clean off the stock paste and apply their surprise TIM themselves? As it's been said before, application is more important than the paste itself when comparing the higher-grade pastes.

 

I'd agree with going with option #2. I would assume "surprise" is probably stock. The differences in CPU are admittedly pretty minor, but still nice to have (slightly faster base clock on the 2720QM vs the 2630QM, and 2 extra official multipliers at each level of turbo boost), and it's hard to go wrong with extra RAM and another year of warranty. As well, with the local Sager reseller, customer service and support would obviously be a lot easier to get, if necessary.

 

Thanks Forge and Judicator.

Yeah, I believe the choice isn't such a mystery. But I think it fits this topic, it illustrates how people use such details that are not as easy to quantify its importance to raise the prices. Of course, brand name and other things like the size of the company should impact as well and so on, but I think the paste is the major difference here...

I think stock thermal paste is fine for me and my usage. Should be, at least. Anyway, for the first years, I wouldn't mess with the notebook main organs to avoid losing its warranty. But then, If I notice that its temperature are going up, I can send it to support (no charge at all on both options) and have it back with a thermal paste renewal some days later.

 

Klevos are famously easy to mod and maintain, so when you've played around with it, flip it over and pop off the maintainence panel (which won't void your warranty.) If you don't notice any "warranty is void if removed" stickers (like I had on my old Asus G50vt and G51vx) you can do it yourself without issue.

 

That was a fun experiment. But doesn't Arctic Silver also require some sort of curing time?

 

AS5 does. Don't forget to check the date on that "review". It was originally written 9 years ago, and although the last modification was 2 years ago, I can't seem to see anything that was obviously changed to update it. Note that he's using AS3...

 

any ideas how the stock thermal pastes from those new intel processors compares to these better ones ?

 

The bigger factor is how they're applied, not the conductive properties of the paste themselves.

 

sorry for that, but stock thermal pastes are applied differently than other pastes like IC Diamond 7?

I understand that the past should be the thinner as possible as long as it get all over the heat exchanging surface. Minimizing the resistance to heat exchange.