I had no idea that Thermal Paste was so competitive.

[wade7575]

I'm asymbling my new "main" rig and ran into some trouble. Skipping the story, I had to remove my HSF from the CPU and will have to do it again for further troubleshooting. I used the thermal paste that it came with and when I reinstalled, I used the last of my Noctua NT-H1. Before you start posting about how bad it is and how great liquid metal is....

I went and read a bunch of reviews on paste. Some big names were at the top to include liquid metal (always at the top) and many silicone based pastes. Now many of the top rated pastes are just not available. Try getting anything Arctic that isn't AS5. MX4? Yeah maybe. MX5? Nope. MX6? Still no. Noctua NT-H2? Not from my preferred retailers. So struggling to find a highly rated TIM (Thermal Interface Media), looking at whatever chart you find, you'll see that the difference between exceptional TIM and "good" TIM is very little. Like maybe 4c? Maybe less. That is, compared to liquid metal it's only 2-4c different. I'm just not gonna waste my time and money with liquid metal.

I can recall when Arctic Silver 5 was the king. While It gets a bad rap today, it's still good according to reviews I read but I didn't get that. I mean even today AS5 is in the middle of the pack. I ended up getting a large tube of Prolimatech Pro-PK3. As it is towards the top of many reviews and because the difference between this and other high end pastes is so small, I think I will be happy with this TIM. Now if shipping was instant.

Unless you are trying to drop as many degree's of heat as you can because you cpu runs really hot just stick with Noctua paste,my friend got me to apply some new thermal paste that was blue and it dropped your temps by about 5 degree's in most case's but it also dried up in 2 or 3 months,I forget the name of the blue stuff.

Noctua however has never let me down and it doesn't dry up and always performs great.

 

[don256us]

Unless you are trying to drop as many degree's of heat as you can because you cpu runs really hot just stick with Noctua paste,my friend got me to apply some new thermal paste that was blue and it dropped your temps by about 5 degree's in most case's but it also dried up in 2 or 3 months,I forget the name of the blue stuff.

Noctua however has never let me down and it doesn't dry up and always performs great.

You know. I've been seeing a lot about paste drying up. As an (older) guy in the industry, I've never had silicon based TIM (Thermal Interface Media) dry up. Not the AS5 from my early days, not the Noctua paste nor the Proletech I'm using today. I run machines 100% 24/7 for years and have never known of an issue with paste drying up and not working.

For me, I don't want to splash out a ton of cash for just a few degrees C. I will spend on a PSU, CPU, GPU but not for TIM. I just need it to work and not have to question if I need to replace it. I'm lazy that way.

 

[freeagent]

I think dry out happens when you go on too thin. I haven't had that problem since I started using a little more

 

[wade7575]

I didn't use to little that's for sure and I still can't recall the brand that is blue,but I checked youtube and a lot of the trusted guys were saying the same thing that it dried up really fast.

 

[Woomack]

I think dry out happens when you go on too thin. I haven't had that problem since I started using a little more

If you use more, then it will dry out later It shouldn't be dry at all, or at least not in the typical PC life period, so 3-5 years. The new generation of thermal compounds is supposed to last at least 5-10 years without drying out and should keep its thermal conductivity about the same as freshly applied. The main problem with older stuff like AS5 is that they dry out fast, and the performance gets worse over time. Usually, the higher the CPU/GPU temp, the faster TIM dries out.

 

[EarthDog]

Id imagine the 'dry out' rate remains constant for the product. If you have more, it takes longer like it takes a cup of water longer to evaporate than half a cup.

 

[JLK03F150]

I still can't recall the brand that is blue

Arctic MX-5 is blue, maybe that's the one. IIRC it was discontinued due to consistency of quality issues.

 

[Woomack]

I thought that MX-4 and MX-5 were gray but in blue tubes ... but really, MX-5 is light blue:

Arctic actually shows expected performance, and their products are not on the top of the list:




Btw. Arctic isn't the same manufacturer as Arctic Silver. These are two different brands. One is from Germany, another is from the US. I actually thought that Arctic Silver is from Japan as they skipped AS4 because 4 means death, so there were AS3 and AS5.

 

[wade7575]

It wasn't MX-5 it was another brand I know that for sure because I have only used Artic Silver Noctua and paste's that came with CPU coolers and the one I can't recall.