best thermal paste money can buy

GJ02

GJ02

GJ02

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whats the best thermal paste available
when you buy a new cpu does it come supplied with paste ?
or is it better to buy your own ?
 
Arctic cooling MX-2 is good.
Retail CPU's will come with paste pre applied to the heatsink.
Buying good stuff like MX-2 or AS5 is usually better.
 
always remove the pre-applied stuff.

As for best TIM....

That Diamond powder stuff is meant to be good...whatever its called. You can even make your own.
 
Does Arctic Silver-5 have a best before date or anything?

I have some leftover from a few years ago, would it still be okay to use again or?
 
Gold is no good, out of Metals its Silver 1st then Copper 2nd, Diamond and Carbon are better again.

You can keep Arctic Silver forever but need to keep it tip down to stop it separating, and keeping in Fridge helps this.

(Their website stated above).

So basically Bluetac it upright to a surface and use it 24 hours later.
 
Shamelessly plucked from another site:

Material --------Thermal Conductivity (W·m-1·K-1)

Diamond -------895-2300
Silver----------429
Copper--------386
Gold-----------317
Aluminium-----237
Air-------------0.0262
 
Last edited:
weescott said:
Shamelessly plucked from another site:

Material --------Thermal Conductivity (W·m-1·K-1)

Diamond -------895-2300
Silver----------429
Copper--------386
Gold-----------317
Aluminium-----237
Air-------------0.0262
Click to expand...

So do you reckon if I used normal Copperslip, the stuff you use when fitting brake pads it'd work better then MX-2/AS5? Who wants to be the first to try :D
 
what about lapping both the cpu and heatsink perfectly so they can be "wrung" together ? theoretically thered be no gaps at all and it would be as though they where just one block together.
 
"andy" said:
what about lapping both the cpu and heatsink perfectly so they can be "wrung" together ? theoretically thered be no gaps at all and it would be as though they where just one block together.
Click to expand...

As an Engineer who has mated surfaces that tight that they don't need Gaskets or say Exhaust Valves in a 16 Cylinder Engine so they are Hot Gas Tight I could say yes it would be ideal if there was perfect contact and no TIM needed.

So for now we get it as "Flat" as possible and use less TIM. ;)

P.S, So you are familiar with "Slip Gauges" you can "Ring" Together ?. ;)
 
weescott said:
Shamelessly plucked from another site:

Material --------Thermal Conductivity (W·m-1·K-1)

Diamond -------895-2300
Silver----------429
Copper--------386
Gold-----------317
Aluminium-----237
Air-------------0.0262
Click to expand...

Wow, diamond is amazing - could seriously bling out my PC too :D
 
Thermal paste is hard to benchmark as just removing and reseating the heatsink can change the temps by 1° or 2° let alone the cure time that some have of 200 hours of hot and cold cycles.

Unless your into extreme overclocking your find very little difference between most of them but you can't go wrong with MX-2 or AS5.
 
weescott said:
Shamelessly plucked from another site:

Material --------Thermal Conductivity (W·m-1·K-1)

Diamond -------895-2300
Silver----------429
Copper--------386
Gold-----------317
Aluminium-----237
Air-------------0.0262
Click to expand...

Haha, so all that £3000 of gold-plating they put on the McLaren F1's engine to help heat dissipation would have worked better if it was just copper? Priceless :D
 
The thermal Conductivity above is based on pure base metals in a perfect lab environment but gold is often used as it does not Oxidise or get a Patina coating the metal that ruins the Thermal Conductivity in real world use.

IE: in real world gold plated copper will give better Thermal Conductivity than copper with a green oxidised coating.
 
yes, gold is used because it is not very reactive, in comparison to copper which is highly reactive.
 
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