Which Thermal Paste to buy and apply (Traditional and Liquid Metal)

Damn, Gelid was the paste I have been using for years now and it lasts a good time too. Good quality for laptops esp.. Now this goes to dumpster. Kryonaut is also runny and wont last much on laptops. Even with Luumi Gelid was good, but after he purchased a new tube the temps are not at the mark (check below pic). So now the better options are only the usual top ones - Kingpin KPX, Thermalright TFX and Phobya Nanogrease Extreme. I wonder how Noctua NT-H1/2 fares against these. Arctic MX4 was just mediocre level iirc, they got a new one though MX5, I think MX5 is also not that viscous so should avoid that as well.



Off goes into trash Gelid. A real shame. Also their thermal pads are quite good, esp for the RTX FE cards thermal pad mods. I hope they didn't cheap out on them too, if they do then only option would be super expensive Alphacool pads. Must avoid Fujipoly's, as are too hard and not worth the cash at all.

 

On my desktops, KPX, TFX, NanoGrease Extreme, Kryosnaut and MX-4 all perform so close to the same that I find it very difficult to measure a difference between them. I think they are all decent products and I use them. I do not care for Kryosnaut, as I find it makes more of a mess with stray "strings" of thermal paste when I remove a water block and it takes me extra time to clean up all of that crap that it leaves behind. I tested Noctua NT-H1 a long time ago and it was probably the worst I had ever used on a laptop. That may have changed because it is clear that manufacturers modify their products without changing the names associated with them.

While it was never good for laptops when I have tried to use it, (horrible, in fact,) MX-4 actually works really well on a CPU water block. It's easy to apply, spread and remove, but it sticks really well to the surfaces. My home office is usually way too hot, even with the AC running 24/7, and that affects my thermals more than what thermal paste was applied. I use MX-4 on my Z490 desktop that I use for work. I tried to use it with the 5950X and it gets too damned hot for anything other than liquid metal.

 

I tested Noctua NT-H1 a few years ago. Worse than Gelid GC Extreme. I have used Cooler-Master MasterGel Maker the last years for low power laptops and GPU's. This one is cheaper and most easier to find here home. But it won't last forever on high performance pc's. Still an ok choice for the price and quality. I prefer it many times over Kryonaut that is flooded in Norwegial web-shops (I call it trash paste - but oc'ers like it, mostly for sub zero temps - they clean it of after a few hours usage). For high performance machines I use and prefer Conductonaut. Nothing beat liquid metal. And it will last a very long time if you do it correct https://imgur.com/a/2xHnNVn

Edit. Found one of my older posts from 2014


@Vasudev Please update OP with the info about Gelid GC Extreme. Refer to my post #744 Thanks

 

Ambient temperature is 79.5°F (27.4°C). Without liquid metal it climbs up to just under 100°C and the system usually becomes unresponsive and needs to be powered off at the PSU after this kind of stress test when using normal thermal paste.

 

Speaking about Luumi he tested the Phobya Nanogrease Extreme/Alphacool Subzero earlier this month with mediocre results, only on par with MX-5. 2-2.5 degrees is a big delta in his tests, it's worse than the GD900. And personally speaking, Nanogrease Extreme/Alphacool Subzero is rather poor: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...and-liquid-metal.806840/page-48#post-11084441

Way too thin just like the blue Gelid GC Extreme, it can't work on uneven heatsinks with low pressure. It's better than the Artic trash though.

 

That is not accurate based on extensive testing I have done if you are speaking about laptops. Unless they just recently changed something, Phobya Nanogrease Extreme is the opposite of too thin. It is thicker than most pastes and for that reason it is one of the best you can use on laptops. Same is true for TFX. It may not work well for sub-zero because it is so thick. You need very low viscosity thermal interface for sub-zero. The only thicker paste I have ever used is IC Diamond and if your laptop has extra-sloppy fitting heat sinks it is actually the only one that will work reasonably well. It won't fix the engineering defect, but it will help plug the gaps.

 

Personally I've seen a significant difference between Arctic MX-4 and Kryonaut on desktops, but I've only ever owned SFF desktops, so that's probably why. Better thermal pastes really make a difference with low profile heatsinks.

Phobya Nanogrease is the best paste for laptops and SFF desktops.

 

Which one (Kryosnaut or MX-4) did you find worked better in your SFF scenario?

 

Thicker than most pastes....maybe. It depends on your paste experience. Compared to Artic MX-4 it is thick, compared to the best laptop pastes I have tested it's clearly a lower viscous paste. SYY-157, FuzeIce Plus, Deepcool EX750, Deepcool Z10, Akasa T5 Pro-Grade+, Maxtor CTG8, IC Diamond 24, Prolimatech PK-3 Nano, Coolermaster MasterGel Maker, basically any Thermalright, Cryorig CP5 (and probably some more I forgot) are much thicker especially at working temperature. Compared to all of these Phobya Nanogrease Extreme is moderate viscous instead of high viscous. Even Phobya agrees in their official spec, just to compare it with SYY-157:

Phobya Nanogrease: 85000cps
SYY-157: 200000cps


It's several degrees worse than the best on my laptop, viscosity is way too low just like the Gelid which is also rated with only 85000cps by the way, it can't work because of that. I have to disagree with you that Nanogrease Extreme is one of the best for a laptop therefore. It doesn't mean it's bad for all laptops, not every heatsink is uneven or very low pressure and maybe it works better with a higher quality heatsink but the desktop test from Luumi implies it's not the case, otherwise it should have performed better on his desktop. Did you test SYY-157 or any of the new viscous 2020/2021 paste generation and how is it working for you?

Here is a spreading video from the Nanogrease Extreme. Comparing it to TFX would be pointless (result is obvious) but here is a spreading video of the Matrox CTG9 which isn't even one of the highest viscous in my list. Just from the spreading it's a noticeably difference.

 

Yes, the Maxtor pastes look very thick. Those would almost certainly de-socket an AMD CPU if you didn't twist is back and forth a few times to break the seal. I have used the MasterGel Maker and it is also very good stuff.

SYY-157, FuzeIce Plus, Deepcool EX750, Deepcool Z10, Akasa T5 Pro-Grade+, Maxtor CTG8 and Cryorig CP5 I have never heard of. Thanks for mentioning them and for sharing that video. Are they all relatively new products for the US market, or just obscure brands that are only available on foreign web sites? The mention of them will give laptop owners some new things to play with to try to tame the ungodly thermals on their volcanic turdbooks.

I don't need to do any paste experimentation any more since I just use liquid metal most of the time and enjoy the results. Nothing compares to it. Since I don't do sub-zero cooling the problems it causes in that scenario do not affect me. But, those in the list that I have never heard of before is kind of interesting because even though I don't tinker with paste any more I do still pay attention to things that are happening in the enthusiast realm.

 

I did a repaste on my 2.5 year old Clevo notebook! It originally had IC Diamond and I repasted it with IC Diamond lol. The original paste was very dry but there was an improvement so I'm happy about it. I'm most likely repeating what's been said here but it lasts a long time (2-5°C improvement from what I can tell so far) and works well for laptops!

I put some pictures of the repasting here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...en-owners-lounge.826239/page-47#post-11120300

 

Kryonaut worked better for me. I got quite a significant drop in temps. Since I didn't actually measure the drop, I can't tell you exactly how much it was, but I can tell you that I can actually run my i7 7700K at maximum stock speeds without thermal throttling now (with a little headroom left over), whereas before I had to underclock to 4 GHz just to barely stay under 100°C.

So in short, it allowed me to boost the all core speed by another 400 MHz without thermal throttling.

 

Some folks mention KPx is better, some say TFX, some say Phobya, same for longevity lol. I think any of these three should be good for longevity in Desktop or Laptop. Ofc none of them will beat the trash paste used in virtually all GPUs, CPU dies in laptops and IHS for prebuilts and etc also CLC AIOs in terms of longevity. But those 3 will smash the factory paste in performance.

 

Some of them are available on US Amazon (SYY-157 or FuzeIce Plus) and yes they are new except for Cryorig. SYY-157 is a big seller on Amazon.

I purchased the Phobya because of his test....with poor results. His sample size is low anyways, he didn't test the newer ones. KPx should work great for me because it should have a high enough viscosity and is performing really good in so many desktop and notebook tests, this is probably the last of the better known top rated I haven't tried yet. There is not so much left, the most promising to me at the moment is the brand new CryoFuze from Coolermaster, because the previous MasterGel Maker performed really good. If the new one is a real improvement it's great. I hope it's easier to spread and as viscous or more viscous than the old one.

 

There is a first unboxing video from the Cryofuze on youtube. Unfortunately he didn't spread it with the spatula and he covered the tube spreading with his hand mostly. It seems like it's a thicker paste from what I can see.

 

I have received the yellow Gelid GC-Extreme and finished testing both Gelid as well as SYY-157 just for reference from a top paste. The yellow Gelid performs worse (tried it two times and this is the better result from the yellow I'm posting). Viscosity the same, no difference to me. The blue is noticeably stickier and more difficult to spread, so yes the paste seems to differ, just not with the result I was hoping for though. I can't know if this is a bad yellow batch I have, Luumis blue 3.5g Gelid worked better than the yellow (10g). For me it doesn't matter anyways, viscosity is too low. There is no chance it can reach the best pastes on my device.


SYY-157
69/77/71/74

Gelid GC-Extreme yellow
75/83/79/82

Gelid GC-Extreme blue
72/81/74/77

 

There is a better spreading video on aliexpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002831278538.html


Cryofuze is a high viscous paste which is good news.

 

That looks a lot like SYY-157. If it is the same paste it's an extremely expensive version of it.

 

Hey guys i have a gaming laptop Asus S17 QHD i9 11900h and 3080, when i bought it a boutique pc builder offered free repaste and i was happy and took the option, now a month later my GPU is throtthling with hotspot in the high 90s... (i can't send it back because the boutique is in the US and i'm in France right now.. and shipping is horrible)

The CPU is liquid metal from factory but the GPU is normal paste, i'm considering to apply liquid metal to the GPU but at the same time i ordered some SYY 157, the dissasembly seems a bit tricky and i would like to know what you guys think i should do ? Go straight LM to both GPU and CPU or keep the config with LM on CPU and SYY 157 on GPU.

Thank you boys

 

You may want to read this.

https://www.overclock.net/threads/o...90-owners-club.1753930/page-912#post-28875377
https://www.overclock.net/threads/o...90-owners-club.1753930/page-912#post-28875386
https://www.overclock.net/threads/o...90-owners-club.1753930/page-912#post-28875404

Also can you try Honeywell 7950SP? Where can you get this? (in USA)?

 

Only place I know is ebuy7 in China. Paste: https://www.ebuy7.com/item/631006993629
and what I like better, in sheets, https://www.ebuy7.com/item/651662476286

The paste you are supposed to wait 15 hours after applying for it to cure before putting the sink back on. The paste is very hard to spread. Its thick like half chewed day old bubble gum. The sheet is already cured and you can cut to size. The paste took a month to get because of slow shipping option. The sheet took 10 days by fedex 2-3 day.

 

How well does it perform? I assume it lasts close to forever...

 

Many of us have learned after repasting the new Legion 7's, nothing else works as good except LM and we screwed up. Its also hard getting the thermal module installed back that satisfies other paste. I think I read somewhere the 7950SP is supposed to last 8 years. You can go to the product page and click the translate button on the images and it has more info. Temps were great before repasting so I thought it would be even better with after market paste. Wrong.

 

I was looking for some thermalpaste with a good viscosity to apply on 2 notebooks and i found the thermalright TFX and the zezzio ZT-GX but both are four times more expensive that the deepcool g15 ( g40) here, the g15 one is good enough right?

 

Zezzio ZT-GX is the same paste as SYY-157. Not quite as thick as TFX.
I got 6 grams of it for $12.00 (USD), which was close to the same price for SYY-157.
SYY keeps going on sale for 8 grams for $12.88 (sometimes $11.00) and is usually $13.66.
ZT-GX is back up to $17.99 right now. I bought the ZT-GX since at the same price per gram as SYY-157 I had nothing to lose.

I would get the SYY-157 if you can get 8 grams of that for cheaper.

I can tell no difference between SYY and Zezzio ZT-GX in either fingerprint smear test or temp behavior. But TFX is a world apart from them in thickness. TFX actually feels more like a very wet thermal putty rather than paste, unless you get a syringe that is wetter than usual. Only Thermagic ZF-EX is like this (they may or may not be the same exact paste, but seeing how expensive 2g of ZF-EX is on Aliexpress, it might be).

How are TFX and Zezzio the same price for you? Where are you buying it from?
On Amazon, 6g of TFX (6.2g) is triple the price of 6g of SYY-157 and more than double the price of ZT-GX.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09BVPWZBT/

https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Paste，8-8w-Heatsink-Compound-Conductive/dp/B079DQS77Q/

SYY was even giving away gift cards if you left a review of their paste on their website, along with a picture of the review, then they would give you a $10 gift card you could use to buy even MORE paste Not sure if they're doing that, but you can see a ton of people are buying it. It seems to be outselling Arctic MX-5. Seems like they started selling it early January this year, a bit before MX-5 came out, but they're just killing it in sales.

 

Its a shame that i cant buy from amazon because the import fees and shipping price is so damn expensive its like 2 or 3x times the price of product, so usually i buy things from aliexpress and shopee( online store from singapure), with coupons i can get the deepcool g15 for like 2$ so i wanna know if this one is good enough.

 

Deepcool G40 worked really good on my notebook and G15 is the same just a lower capacity version. The other Deepcool pastes Z10 and EX750 are very good as well, Z10 is the highest viscous from them. Performance didn't really differ though. Maxtor CTG8 is another good high viscous option, all available on shopee.

 

I found the thermagic ZF-EX of 2g for like 3.5$ so i bought it , lets see if i can decrease the problem of the pump out effect that those two notebooks have, pausing for a moment to think all the thermalpastes I've used on them in the last few years have been low viscosity ones( mx-4, noctua nt-h1).

 

Where was it that cheap at?

 

Looks like it was a placeholder price, it's down to 8€ and scheduled to be available on October 19th at Amazon. I hope it is not the same as SYY-157, I want something different. The youtube unboxing tester said same spreading as Mastergel Maker, on average 3-4 degrees cooler.

 

Well I bought some more 6.2g of TFX and ordered 30g of GD007, because why not? (I still have three tubes of 2g ZF-EX but I'm still not 100% sure that TFX and ZF-EX are precisely the same.
Did you see my three links earlier?

https://www.overclock.net/threads/o...90-owners-club.1753930/page-912#post-28875404

That guy posted that Thermalright seems to have a 'ghost brand' that sells their products under different labels and licensing their IP to other brands which produce in the same fab with slightly different recipes. I wonder if Thermagic is one of those (ZF-EX=TFX, ZF-12=TF8??)

and

https://www.overclock.net/threads/o...90-owners-club.1753930/page-912#post-28875377
https://www.overclock.net/threads/o...90-owners-club.1753930/page-912#post-28875386

 

Shopee but is the marketplace of Brazil, i dont know if the marketplace of singapure is global shipping, i got discounts and cupons to free shipping.

 

GD007 should be the better choice from Foshan Electronics for direct die and uneven heatsink, it's thicker than their GD900. Sure Thermagic paste might be Thermalright IP or same fab, it's not just TFX-->ZF-EX

In this Shenzhen/Guangdong area there are several factories and not just Shenzhen Tensan Co,.Ltd, the manufacturer of SYY-157. Foshan Electronics, Halnziye, Maxtor are well known paste manufacturers as well with own factories.

Deepcool has factories in Shenzhen and Dongguan (Z10 is definitely unique from the consistency). Other big companies in the cooling business like Coolermaster and Akasa also have at least one factory in China, although we don't know if it's for thermal paste manufacturing. There are factory tour videos on youtube from Deepcool and Coolermaster.

 

Interesting Blacktherm spreading video. I wasn't sure but from this it's clear to me my tube was faulty (dried out). It was harder to spread than Thermalright TFX and couldn't connect with the heatsink even with the CPU heated up. It's a thick paste nervertheless.

 

Best Thermal Paste for CPUs 2021: 90 Pastes Tested and Ranked tomshardware.com By Garrett Carver about 9 hours ago (Oct 11, 2021)

 

That article by Tom's is the worst ever. Like every time they update it its filled with absurd results.

SYY-157 4C behind MX-5? I tested SYY and MX-5 on both a GTX 1070 (laptop) and Radeon r9 290X and 9900k (CPU) and on each one, MX-5 was a few C behind SYY-157.
Even found SYY-157 to be slightly better than Kryonaut (like 1C).

It's clear that whoever is doing that terrible work at Toms doesn't know how to spread thick pastes properly.
You can just use a hairdryer and spread it, or if you don't own a hairdryer, just put the syringe in almost boiling water for 10 minutes (removed from flame).

 

Lol what a test, FuzeIce Plus almost 7 degrees and SYY-157 4 degrees down to Arctic MX-5 in the low tension mount test. Even the MX-4, Arctic Céramique and Arctic Silver 5 are better there.

The thermal conductivity from a paste like SYY-157 or FuzeIce Plus is too good, no chance this test is accurate. It's obvious he is struggling and possibly dislike thick pastes, most of the thicker stuff is bad in this test. IC Diamond and Kingpin KPx are mediocre there as well and this is the absolute highend.

I have seen several tests from the Artic MX-5 - it can be a solid desktop CPU paste but it's no highend. Except for notebooks with uneven heatsink, then it's on the bad side like most of the low viscosity pastes to be fair.

This is a much better test: https://albestech.com/migliore-pasta-termica-2021/

And this is one of the better MX5 tests I have seen, in the Luumi test MX5 does much worse.

 

So the SYY-157 is a great paste for laptop ? Thick enough to not be affected by the pump out effect ?

 

Yes it is, although no idea about longevity.

I found a Cryofuze comparison with the old MasterGel Maker on youtube.

(I have to use google translator)

Cryofuze vs Mastergel Maker It's brutal. Only the machine.. Decreased 3-6 degrees Celsius. Look at Core 2, test 3 times. -
MasterGel Maker 74 / 76 / 75 degrees -
Cryofuze 70 / 71 / 71 degrees


This is impressive, of course it doesn't mean it will go down 3+ degrees on my notebook. I mean the Mastergel Maker is still one of the best, I made a test with some pastes yesterday and SYY-157 was 1 degree better on average which is a very good result for the old MasterGel Maker. Only a few pastes can match or beat this.


KRYO33
76/82/78/81

Phanteks PH-NDC
72/81/74/78

Cryorig CP5
72/80/74/78

Maxtor CTG8
74/83/76/81

SYY-157
72/80/73/76

Coolermaster MasterGel Maker
73/81/74/77

Prolimatech PK-3 Nano
75/82/76/78

 

On reddit someone tried the Cryofuze on his laptop and GPU: https://www.reddit.com/r/MSILaptops...aezSJ-VbaefNL4r-3zsRW7qhF8ZEq36ObGhHw6zmxAnNo

 

@Rooter1234 Thanks for testing the Deepcool EX750, bought it to replace the Gelid GC Extreme (blue colour) I used for my laptop and very happy with the new results!

 

Two more Coolermaster Cryofuze spreading videos here and here. Doesn't look like SYY-157 to me, it looks much more sticky in the video and seems like much harder to apply compared to SYY-157 or FuzeIce Plus. It's available on amazon.de btw and I should be able to test it next week. I'm currently preparing a new test with OCCT (Linpack 2021). I can get more consistent temperatures with OCCT (in constant mode). With Prime95 there are some spikes because the load isn't consistent.

 

For my laptop lenovo t420, mx5 didn't work (bad temps after 20 days), but deepcool g40 worked like a charm.

 

It doesn't work for me either from the beginning. MX5 is crap for notebooks unless it's a really good even heatsink, then it might work. It's a desktop only paste in my opinion.

 

Looks like Thermalright TFX / Thermagic ZF-EX's behavior almost exactly. Wonder if its from the same supplier. Might be why its $20 for 2 grams wth....

Hell even the syringe looks 100% identical to the Thermagic ZF-EX syringe, including the tip....

 

The initial price listing wasn't final, I purchased it for 8€ on Amazon. Now it's up to 13€ and not available anymore.

 

Lol another retard in the comments turning off cpu turbo and touting great temps

 

I put lquid ultra on my laptops cpu and mx4 on the gpu. I mostly use the processor for 4k video editing on a friends youtube channel and part time income from other editing projects. So I can run my laptop's 11800h processor maxed out at 4.31ghz at 85C.

 

The blue Gelid is definitely (much) better for me, I just tested it again.The blue is more difficult to spread (stickier) and I would say it's slightly more viscous which makes sense because it performs better. So quite the opposite what igorslab said. Maybe it's not yellow and blue related, no idea. However the fact that both differ in performance and are both called Gelid GC-Extreme is not a great policy, even though in my case the newer one is better.


Gelid GC-Extreme yellow 23.2
82/86/82/84


Gelid GC-Extreme blue 23.2
79/83/80/84

 

i'm really curious to see this cryofuze in comparison with pastes like SYY-157 because is expensive( atleast for me), last time i saw for like 19 dollars LOL