Best thermal pads 2019?

I cant seem to find anything akin to a round up for them. The closest is a few paste test that include pads buts thats about it, and it gives no long comparison. The top ones are fujipoly and alphacool pads according to one source, though I get the idea that pads like paste are something where your paying a premium for minimal gains, and the price of the two I mentioned really show it. Can anyone recommend me pads then? Taking into account performance and longevity as well. Pads for vrms, gddr chips, etc, and not gpu/cpu.

 

How would you compare them other than using manufacturer thermal conductivity numbers? Most of the time you can't measure the temperature of VRAM or VRMs and different type of pads have no measurable impact on longevity of those components (please don't tell "I have different opinion" unless you have statistically significant data confirming this). Personally I just use Arctic pads from Amazon - they are pretty soft and easy to work with and I had no negative impact on anything when replacing stock thermal pads with them.

 

I don't think there is such thing as a best thermal pad. There are thermal pads that are great because of their amazing conductivity, but they are often brittle or difficult to compress (meaning you have to be very precise in knowing the gap you need to bridge), and there are others that are very soft and versatile. VRAM doesn't get super hot, so I typically use K5 pro on them, with good results. VRM stuff would likely benefit from better conductivity (assuming you have something to conduct to), but often you run into the case where you need different thicknesses for different chips. I run a few fujipoly in places that I think can benefit from high conductivity, and I run cheap thermal pads that are very compressible in areas that I don't think need too much heat transfer but could benefit from some...

 

At the very least it would be nice to know which ones are soft, compressible, and have a good lifespan, and in my case I already know the gap measurements. Certain mobo/gpu combinations iirc actually give temperature readings to vrms for instance. Jaybee added pads to his paste roundup once here, though its 2016 http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...e-recommendations-update-thermal-pads.796820/

Im with you on running with cheap pads, but just for the sake of quality and parts longevity, I might as well spend a few extra dollars and go for something quality.

 

Arctic pads are very soft, compressible and I believe they have 2 year warranty according to Arctic's site, though this depends on temperature and can be longer than that. The Fujipoly pads which are available on various online stores are more hard and less compressible and I don't believe they will have any warranty since these pads are being sold by small resellers. Fujipoly actually makes huge variety of thermal interface materials but most of those are not available for general customer.

All of them will dry out over time and will require replacement.

 

I also use a lot of generic silicon pads that are super cheap, have very mediocre conductivity, but never dry out and are super compressible.

 

Gelid GP extreme pads are very good. Little expensive but they can compressed nicely. Also very good conductivity rating.

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