Best thermal paste for laptop

I have Kryonaut and I think it is not performing decently.

As I don’t know if my Clevo P970EF has a copper heatsink I would like to open a poll for what can be the best thermal paste for both CPU and GPU.

I wold love to apply Conductonaut on the CPU and keep Kryonaut on the GPU.

The 8750h undervolted reaches 100 degrees playing Battlefield V.

The RTX 2070 maxQ gets to 85 max.

How true is it that Kryonaut performs badly over 80 degrees celsius? Best alternative? Noctua NT-H2?

 

Kryonaught is designed to work well at sub zero temperatures but i've not had an issue with it.

Battlefield V is a complete system hammer as it loads both CPU/GPU to high levels.

 

What maximum temperatures do you have? Thank you.

 

I have the NP9877 so a VERY different machine and it's actually fully liquid metal throughout so not really applicable.

 

All clevo laptops have copper heatsinks?

 

The contact plate (The part touching the die) is always copper at least.

You have to be careful with liquid metal, the tolerances for contact are much tighter and if it gets out it can easily kill your system.

 

If I apply Conductonaut I will apply a nail polish coating and then tape.

But what I am afraid of is that just below that part it may not be copper and it will corrode.

 

If it's spreading out from the contact area you have bigger worries.

 

Best is liquid metal. If you do not want to use it - then try IC Diamond. It will last the longest out of all conventional pastes with low pressure heatsink in laptops but you must be very careful because it may scratch the surface of CPU and GPU.

 

I have not checked that. I am waiting for MX4 to arrive to repaste and look.

 

There is IC Diamond 7 and 24, which one?

How to be careful to avoid the scratches? X method for GPU and line method for CPU?

 

7 and 24 are simply tube sizes.

Scratches tend to occur during removal.

 

Risky for me then...

 

The scratches don't impact performance or reliability.

 

What could happen if laptop is working in temperatures below 10 deg.C with liquid metal (Thermal Grizzly - Condactonaut)? There are some warnings about it.

 

Unlikely for it to be operating at that point, doing any arctic exploration?

 

Well, lets say I am on a bicycle trip, and I need to start laptop. What could happen if there are like 5 °C or -10°C?
Galium melting point is −19 °C

I know, it is not most mobile laptop

 

Where did you see the warning and what does it actually say?

 

Just go with a paste if you're worried about it. If you're talking short hops your bag should insulate it well enough that it won't actually hit outside temps. Back when I had a bike that I could start at -10C I could make it most places i was going and pull out a non-frozen laptop from my bag. If you are out long enough to actually hit those low temps, I'd be nearly as worried about condensation.

 

Why do you think Kryonaut is not doing a decent job?
The new Intel CPUs have turbo boost which is designed to take advantage of thermal headroom. If the CPU is cool, say 45C, turbo boost will make it run faster under load until it reaches the throttling temperature. This is great for short bursts of activity, like launching an app, but not so good for games which demand sustained CPU usage. I don't think there is any way to keep it cool without turning off turbo boost, as the maximum power dissipation at the turbo clock exceeds the amount of heat the package can dissipate. So, if turbo boost is active (and it should be - you paid for it), the CPU will run hot under load and throttle (even if you have water cooling, it will throttle - it will run at turbo speed for a little longer, but it will eventually throttle).

You could try JOHN@OBSIDIAN-PC's Control Center which has a CPU tuning interface using XTU. There are recommended settings for the CPU in your system.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/clevo-drivers-update-utility-by-obsidian-pc.801464/

 

I think because I see 100 degrees sometimes when gaming BFV so I am really thinking about Kryonaut for GPU and Conductonaut for CPU, how would that work?

 

You can mix just fine just be aware of the fitting tolerances when using liquid metal.

 

That 100C is by design. You will hit it no matter what you do, unless you turn off turbo boost completely. The CPU clock in turbo mode is too high to run continuously - even the package cannot get rid of that much heat, let alone a laptop cooling system. So the CPU can only operate in turbo mode for short bursts, and every time it does that, the CPU temperature will rise because the heat generated is more than the heat that can be dissipated. You could limit the maximum clock during turbo mode if you like, and then it won't get as hot, as the maximum heat produced will be less, and hopefully within the capabilities of the cooling system.

 

My lappy maxes out at 81C on a full load of my 7700HQ.

 

Quad cores are a lot easier to cool.

 

You're using the Control Station recommended settings in CPU tuning, right? Turbo Boost limited to 12 seconds. Turbo boost power 27.5 W.

 

Using system defaults. Turbo Boost Power 45W, TB Time 28 Sec -100mW Undervolt (Core/Cache)

System was like this when I first got it, then by 3 months temps crept up to the 90's. So I repasted with my trusted ICD7, and temps went down about 5C compared to stocks when new. Now the lappy is almost 2 yrs old and temps are the same as when I repasted. (Also, when new, I was able to do a -125mV undervolt, but it's no longer stable at that.)

 

All CPU voltage floors do raise a little as time goes on.

 

I would have said IC Diamond but that paste has a tendency of scratching the die surface (it's satisfying to know that you have a clean scratch free die ) so I stick with Arctic Silver MX-4, there is only a marginal temperature difference between the two. Also remember that arctic silver is EASIER to apply and EASIER to wipe off than ic diamond, plus it spreads nicer due to the compound being more liquid than solid lol.

If your looking for the best 'paste' metal paste is the way to go. Even manufacturers like HP understand that it is the future, foam dam eliminates accidental spills due to sudden force etc...
I personally never have used one on any of my laptops, sitcky tape does the job of covering the capacitors near the die, not one dead cpu or gpu yet

 

Arctic Cooling MX-4 and Arctic Silver 5 are two difference brands of paste, and MX-4 is absolute garbage for laptops, pumping out after weeks if not days of heavy benching.

 

Well I had no idea about that lol, on that note Arctic Silver 5 should DEFINITELY BE ON THE LIST!

 

Nah, AS5 has a habit of turning to glue after a while, making heatsink removal difficult and being a risk for bending heatpipes. Prolimatech PK-3, an otherwise well-performing thick paste, is the same way, which is why I recommend neither for laptops.

 

Your right on that one, had AS5 on my acer 8940g GPU and it came out the MXM slot before the gpu came off the single heatpipe heatsink lol. That stuff is strong but some movement beforehand can resolve that issue

 

Heat would help too so removing it warm.

7738g for me but I used MX-4 as AS5 was old even then.

 

Yeah that would work too. Got a 970m in there right now tdp modded lower due to no vrm cooling and man it’s great to see a 10 year old laptop run circles around bga laptop from back then

 

I modded mine to allow mxm-b cards but only got up to the 560m in it before jumping to a larger platform.

 

To be fair it's not worth it on your platform as you run a core 2 quad or core 2 duo...

However, if it was first gen i7 like the 8940g there is A LOT of potential, up to a 980m with a 940xm

 

QS9200 at 3.4GHz

 

Looking at this thread makes me wonder which is better for my laptop. Kryonaut or IC Diamond? Don't they both use different material?

 

They are different in materials and I migrated from ic diamond to thermal grizzly.

 

Kryonaut is better on paper, but I don't think there's a huge delta between them in most cases.

 

I just find kryonaught a bit more stable chemically.