Best thermal paste

WARburton · 2026-01-19T13:45:09+0000

What’s the best thermal paste for a gaming laptop without using Liquid Metal.
I don’t mind using LM but not on a laptop one drop and it’s all over the place

Philtor · 2026-01-19T13:54:30+0000

These sort of threads always attract debate but you cannot go wrong with good old Arctic MX-4. Good value for money, not electrically conductive and a great performing paste in general

hornetstinger · 2026-01-19T13:57:01+0000

Pitch. You want it to wait for it drip from your dropper onto the CPU heatspreader.

Drangueos · 2026-01-19T13:58:59+0000

Philtor said:
These sort of threads always attract debate but you cannot go wrong with good old Arctic MX-4. Good value for money, not electrically conductive and a great performing paste in general

Agree, I've been using it for years and just bough some more.

Gray2233 · 2026-01-19T13:59:01+0000

My go-to paste is usually MX4, but for something like a GPU or laptop I'd probably lean toward MX6.

I'm told that the new MX7 is excellent for that sort of thing too, but have yet to use it myself.

hornetstinger · 2026-01-19T14:02:40+0000

Gray2233 said:
My go-to paste is usually MX4, but for something like a GPU or laptop I'd probably lean toward MX6.

I'm told that the new MX7 is excellent for that sort of thing too, but have yet to use it myself.

Artic silver spread really well, I don't like the ultra thick compounds, makes the spreading the toast method difficult

randal · 2026-01-19T14:12:08+0000

The latest MX7 is on par with MX4. I can't say if it's any better as I've not done anything scientific, but it's certainly no worse.

Quartz · 2026-01-19T14:31:16+0000

WARburton said:
What’s the best thermal paste for a gaming laptop without using Liquid Metal.

Club386 just did a test.

Livewire88 · 2026-01-19T14:39:43+0000

Just for reference. I recently splashed out on a Thermal Grizzly Kryosheet.

Temps are no lower than they were with the previous Arctic Mx4 or Noctua NT-H2, that I used with the same CPU.

Lesson learned.

WARburton · 2026-01-19T15:06:18+0000

I was going to splash out on the Honeywell stuff that everybody says is a good as LM.

I got some MX-4 so I’ll just use that if there is no real difference

WARburton · 2026-01-19T15:09:16+0000

Quartz said:
Club386 just did a test.

I take that pack it’s looks like the ptm sheet is about 7c better than MX4.

hornetstinger · 2026-01-19T15:13:19+0000

WARburton said:
I take that pack it’s looks like the ptm sheet is about 7c better than MX4.

Just use a slightly bigger rpm to make up the difference.

WARburton · 2026-01-19T15:19:13+0000

hornetstinger said:
Just use a slightly bigger rpm to make up the difference.

CPU hits 90c and fans run at 100% in games (45w mode)

CPU is a 10870h and I know paste the as never been replaced, it’s definitely time. If I’m doing it I may as well do it right.
It only cost’s £10 on offer

momo56 · 2026-01-19T18:14:03+0000

I’d use PTM, saves having to open it again due to pump out.

WARburton · 2026-01-19T18:18:10+0000

Also if it runs cooler are a said fan speed it will give me a little head room.. I order some

tamzzy · 2026-01-19T18:27:52+0000

was gonna pop in here and mention ptm7950 but it seems this was redundant :cry:

WARburton · 2026-01-19T18:39:51+0000

tamzzy said:
was gonna pop in here and mention ptm7950 but it seems this was redundant

I’d seen this before posting and been told on direct die So laptops and gpus it was good but wasn’t 100%