Best thermal paste

So far i always followed reviews. Few years top King on forum was IC Diamond.

Hell lot expensive Been using it for year and i can only say that its thick, hard to spread and drying in 2-3 months. Besides cons its doing the job.

Than i went for thermal grizzly kryonaut Best of Best at 2017. Performance is the same as with IC Diamond but without its cons. Easy to spread and lasting long.

Now it is 2019 and its time for improvement. Many tests are pointing towards Arctic Silver 5. Perhaps it is thermal compound of the year.

What you guys think? Anyone tried? Or mby you have your own champs?

In laptops where temperatures are crucial even more, every celcius makes difference. Choosing the best is only right choice

 

Liquid metal will always be the best for temperatures, and will last a long time if you have good contact pressure. I had no luck with Kryonaut as it dried out quickly, IC Diamond was much better for me. I've not heard of many people using Arctic Silver 5 in 2019. Perhaps in 2009 it was a good paste, but there are so many better alternatives to it nowadays that its not worth using.

 

Try CoolerMaster Mastergel Maker. Same as ICD but very easy to spread. Its been 3 yrs since I repasted.

 

@Arrrrbol LM will always be on the top. But it comes with risk. With risk that some may not take.

@Vasudev you mean same thermal performance?

 

Yeah. Then again, only limit will be depending the heatsink. Flimsy heatsink and similar will need a thin spread method but I recommend spreading the paste with included spatula or Q tips for best performance.
I think there's ~2-5C increase in CPU/GPU temps because my ambient temps are above 35C.

 

Never had a problem with ICD drying out. I never spread it just put a little blob in middle of gpu/cpu. Though I put ICD syringe in plastic bag and put it inside of a cup with hot water so it would heat up. Easier to squeeze it out of syringe.

 

ICD7 is not meant to be spread, but use a line or ball, depending on chip shape. Also I never had it dry out either. My G73JH never dried out in over 5 years of service.

 

I used Kryonaut and Arctic Silver 5 in the past and present. Either one of them should be good for your PC.

 

Does liquid metal ruin copper heatsink? And can it really drip somewhere inside if carrying laptop? I heard a lot of stories about this but it was more like rumors

 

It gets into the pores of the metal and gives it a silvery sheen but does not really impact performance.

 

It will oxidize eventually, but it doesn't have much of an effect IIRC. Dripping inside depends on how you apply it. It's more likely to come out than it would be in a desktop, but if you're at the point where you want to wring every degree possible out of it you're likely willing to do the extra steps to make sure that doesn't happen.

 

It won't exactly drip, but the mounting pressure can force it outside of where you want to confine it. Some Kapton tape or the like can be used as a barrier.

 

Or using the right amount (ie just barely enough for a thin layet) when you have the fit just right.

 

I like when people make random statements without citing any actual data /sarcasm

Seriously, though, how hard it is to link to something like this:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermal-paste-comparison,5108-9.html
Even though the results are from 2017 they are perfectly valid since none of those pastes have changed the formulas.

 

I am still disappointed in the toothpaste's results here. Under-engineered garbage. Maybe they've improved the formula?

 

There's whitening toothpaste with diamond particles. It might be as good as ICD

 

What's work ok on Desktops better cooling or test bench doen't mean it's a good choice for Notebooks worse cooling.

 

that tomshardware data basically says it makes no difference

it actually says the coolaboratory pad is by far the best beating all pastes except grizzly and needing no application, and to the best of my knowledge it never burns off like you may need to reapply the same pad by tightening again

 

for example here : https://www.wepc.com/reviews/best-thermal-paste/

There was one more with Arctic. At the moment im using Grizzly kryonaut. Im not saying it is bad but well.. Would like to go even cooler if it's possible.

About ICD - drying out may be not the right word. Just performance was becoming worse with every day after 2-3 months. If i score in first week after repaste, steady 67C and than after three months it is 75C in same condition. Well hard to say it is good one for long term use.

I was also thinking about Phobya NanoGrease Extreme - with it's 16 w/mk it should be best of best. But its not even close to be best. Whether producent is lying or thermal conductivity is not top priority.

Last but not least. Mby this coollaboratory liquid metalpad - its on pair with regular CLLU in medium pressure scenario. Which is just LM but easier and more save with application - but still dangerous. Anyone is using?

 

It will be better for a couple of mins and then will dry out and powderise.

 

I just find it odd because my experience has given me consistent performance over a long time. My G73JH was repasted once, and it performed consistantly for more than 5 years. My current laptop was also repasted after the stock paste degraded after 3 months, and been going strong for over a year.

Maybe you got a bad batch? I would contact IC and ask for a replacement tube.

As a side note, I found my ICD7 stash that the IC owner sent me when I was awarded my "Engineer" title, and now I have 6 extra tubes, including my original one that I bought from MicroCenter many years ago.

 

I mean AS5 isn't bad, it still has a couple things going for it IMO, like price and that anecdotally the stuff lasts a crazy long time.

 

Heatsink fit and pumping can have an impact too.

 

+1 on the heatsink fit. Especially for laptops where there's little to no room for adjustment, this can make way more difference than we're thinking about.

In my case, I was running with Kryonaut thermal paste and wanted to try liquid metal to see the difference. Under full load I was right at the temps where the fans would go too loud. I didn't need a lot but about 5-10C cooler would be ideal. It's an Asus G703GX, 2080 and i7-8750H.

After applying Conductonaut, the GPU temps did drop by about 5C but the CPU got worse, way worse, almost 20C plus. Where before I had about 70C under load, now it would jump to over 90C. Obviously something was wrong. I checked and re-did the LM application, made sure no fitment interference from the conformal coating or kapton tape around the die but after about 3 tries it was still the same. The one piece heatsink really cannot be adjusted, it just needs screwing it down in the order they show and the screws go all the way (no pressure adjustment).

Ended up going back to Kryonaut on the CPU and left Conductonaut on the GPU. Now, under load, I have the same CPU temps and just a bit lower temps on the GPU (one heatpipe is shared so some efficiency goes out the window because of that too).

Any ideas, I'd be open to experiment with this some more.

If anyone would like to see more, here's where I post updates and some pics:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...71-owners-lounge.826856/page-14#post-10899331

 

If you have heatsink fit issues or uneven pressure - this is clearly a defect which you should try to properly fix yourself (by adjusting thermal pad thickness for components around CPU/GPU or adjusting the mounting points by carefully bending them to create more pressure) or ask the manufacturer to fix it by replacing the laptop (this is the most proper fix). Using band-aid fixes like thicker thermal paste might help but this is not a proper fix and can get worse over time.

 

For now I'll go with the 'fix it myself' plan. I have absolutely no desire to get involved with Asus customer support.

 

Noctua NT-H1 dropped my load temps nearly 15C on my Acer Nitro 5. Then again, the factory Acer thermal compound was basically hard plastic when I removed it. Noctua has the NT-H2 version now, improved over the previous version. Given my particular laptop is fairly low performance (i5-7300Hq/1050Ti) I wasn't convinced getting the "best" or "most expensive" paste was worthwhile. Turns out the $8 tube of Noctua paste was perfect for my use.

 

NT-H1 is a solid TIM. Great compound without the crazy premium and it lasts quite awhile.

 

I checked that link. Looks like a typical generic blog with Amazon referral link spam. You know, the kind people create in hopes of someone clicking on those links so they would receive a percentage of the sale from Amazon, then pollute the blog with barely useful "reviews" so there would be more chance of some idiot clicking and buying some useless stuff on Amazon ;-) I remember removing A LOT of garbage like this back when I was active Wikipedia editor.

TL;DR: I wouldn't put much trust in garbage blogs like this.

 

Noctua have released a better version NT-H2 a time ago. Not the big change https://noctua.at/en/products/thermal-grease/nt-h2-3-5g

 

Yes, I read up on it fairly recently. Haven't tested it yet, though.

 

Just take your time on the disassembly.