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Looks like I will be building a couple of rigs soon - thermal paste

I used Thermal Grizzly on my last build which was many years ago (2018)

But i have no idea how well Thermal Grizzly is rated these days against other pastes.
 
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InHuman said:
Does thermal paste have a shelf life? Just used some mx4 on a 5800x3d that must be over 5 years old now.
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spotted a tube of artic silver from 2000 ish in my garage a few weeks back I think I might need to bin it

but bet money it could be mixed on my vortex mixer if its not dried out
 
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Usually the fluid separates after a few years with AS5 if left in the tube. I think I've still got 1-2 around from 20 years ago or so I've a bad habit of discarding but not binning them once they get down to about 1/4 used and/or been a few years.
 
I use kryonaut (thermal grizzly) and have done for my last few builds. Not the easiest to put on but works a treat. Used many in the past, as has been said before, apart from application I doubt the thermal conductive differences are noticeable for most people. Longevity wise, I have never knowingly had a certain paste fail on me (regardless of it being AS/MX/TG).
 
use mx-4 here, good performance, good price and non conductive for the win.
iv got a tube of mx2 still that iv used recently on an old p4 rig and it came out the tube fine and is working no probs. mx5 was a big issue from what iv read good thing iv avoided it.
 
Pastes are much of a muchness in reality. Unless you're benching extreme overclocks under LN2 just pick what's cheap, available and easy to use. Noctua H2 always fares well, is cheap, big tubes and easy to work with. I've done the whole carbon this, diamond that, grizzly the other and for any home or server build there's just no discernible difference. Third party testing bears this out time and again.
 
I've got some thermalright something or other, Noctua 'h1'? (came with coolers), and some MX-4 .. I just use whatever tube I happen to grab, without the ability to do proper scientific testing, they all perform the same really. IMO.

I shant buy any more until I run out or what I've got goes off in the tube or whatever.
 
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I've used AS5, been using MX4 since my 2500k and it's always been good, also dirt cheap!
Tempted to give MX6 a go next time round but I still have enough left for probably 6-8 CPU applications.

A single application has lasted me 3+ years before with very little/no degradation in performance.
 
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TrojanWhore said:
Tempted to give MX6 a go next time round but I still have enough left for probably 6-8 CPU applications.
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Main benefit for MX6 over MX4 is when used with the Intel 13/14th gen as it can get you a fairly crucial couple of C or so lower temperatures under load, at idle or on cooler running CPUs the performance advantage of MX6 isn't really there.
 
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Rroff said:
Main benefit for MX6 over MX4 is when used with the Intel 13/14th gen as it can get you a fairly crucial couple of C or so lower temperatures under load, at idle or on cooler running CPUs the performance advantage of MX6 isn't really there.
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Yeah I'm still rocking AM4 and probably will for the foreseeable future. I know AM5 targets 95 degrees, but with either that or Intel 13/14 I'd be quite happy to knock the power limit down a few hundred MHz if needed.

Out of interest, the 10 years on AS5 - Was that the 1650v2? My server/bedside media PC is on a 1620 at the moment but I've just picked up a 2680 to upgrade it... 10c20t for £12.99 :D 1650v2s are like £7.59 now!

Edit: also, MX4 is keeping my 5950x at <80 degrees on a £17 cooler (Thermalrite Assassin King -the non-RGB one, was £17 when I looked yesterday/day before, now £21)
 
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TrojanWhore said:
Out of interest, the 10 years on AS5 - Was that the 1650v2? My server/bedside media PC is on a 1620 at the moment but I've just picked up a 2680 to upgrade it... 10c20t for £12.99 :D 1650v2s are like £7.59 now!
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Nah only had the 1650V2 in there since 2020, had a 4820K for the 7-8 years before that (on AS5). Had various Core 2 based systems using AS5 for around 10 years though.

1650V2 still good CPU but amusingly I picked up the Lenovo Legion Go recently and at 5 watt TDP limit it can pretty much match or beat it for performance LOL.

I'm using a 14700K for gaming these days but the 1650V2 and Windows 7 is still my go to if I need to do some serious productivity stuff without Windows 10/11 BS to deal with :s
 
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Haha, yeah it's in no way energy efficient anymore, but for a bedside PC that can run game servers at the same time it's amazing value (Chinese 'Jingsha' motherboard that my dad gave me + 64GB RAM for around £35!)

Was shocked at £7.50 for a 1650 or £13 for the 2680 :)
 
TrojanWhore said:
Was shocked at £7.50 for a 1650 or £13 for the 2680 :)
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Lot of them getting pulled from old Macs, etc. if the power/thermals don't bother pretty cheap way to get still relevant performance for a lot of things - the 1650 and 1680 Xeons are amongst the few which can be overclocked as well and most will do 4.5-4.7GHz easy.
 
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