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Recommended Thermal Paste?
- Thread starter arc@css
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MX6 or thermal grizzly have been really good for me the last few years. Built about 5 systems in that time. Currently using MX6 and is keeping my 9800X3D cool.
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They are good but mx4 is still the best bang for buck imo.
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I've tried a few different brands over the years, but Arctic MX-6 is what I usually use now (MX-4 is still decent too). There's not really much difference in temps between brands when it comes to regular thermal pastes these days. Pretty much anything from Noctua, Arctic, Thermal Grizzly, Geilid, Thermalright, Cooler Master and others will be fine.
The thermal paste that comes with whatever cooler you get will most likely be fine too.
The thermal paste that comes with whatever cooler you get will most likely be fine too.
I recently had some overheating issues with my laptop. Talking 100c+ full load and 80s idle. Used mx4 which helped a bit but temps were still reaching upper 90s even tipping 100 after prolonged gaming. With all my previous desktop CPUs mx4 has always been pretty decent, did the job, but for this laptop I cannot for the life of me get it to work. Even reapplying 3 more times thinking I'd done it wrong. 155H CPU just runs hot I guess and maybe needs something with a bit more kick.
So tried Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut I think its called. For me absolutely light years ahead of the mx4. I don't know why but now I'm getting 60-80c for the most part and clock speed remains maxed out gaming.
So tried Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut I think its called. For me absolutely light years ahead of the mx4. I don't know why but now I'm getting 60-80c for the most part and clock speed remains maxed out gaming.
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Unless you're operating at extremes, which 99% of people are not, MX4 is a good shout or simply use whatever your HSF came with.
Thermalright actually supplies a syringe of quality paste which is good for multiple applications, some other companies just use thermal pads etc.
Don't get hung up on it or spend over a fiver, it literally wont matter.
Thermalright actually supplies a syringe of quality paste which is good for multiple applications, some other companies just use thermal pads etc.
Don't get hung up on it or spend over a fiver, it literally wont matter.
Some laptops now use semi-exotic thermal interface materials as standard including liquid metal, sometimes you can't just replace with any old paste and/or need to prep the surfaces thoroughly before you can re-paste.
Oh yeah, best pastes are conductive metal based and it's not worth the risk unless you really know what you're doing.
This makes sense. The paste that I initially took off whilst prepping the surface, in parts, wasn't too dried out, and you could tell it was pretty high viscosity. The mx4 was a lot thinner but the Grizzly is thick stuff and although trickier to apply, definitely seemed more akin to what was originally on it.
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Soldato
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For AM4, mx4 is plenty... (and non-conductive) and is cheap AF, especially in bigger quantaties - 20g is £11-15 and will last until desktop PCs become obsolete (I'm on the same 8g tube from around 2015!)
AM5/Intel, then may be worth spending the extra ~80% on mx6 (or more for thermal pads/liquid metal)
AM5/Intel, then may be worth spending the extra ~80% on mx6 (or more for thermal pads/liquid metal)
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Thermalright TF7 and Arctic MX-6 are both good and cost very little.
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I've used various types from Thermalright, Noctua and Arctic, along with the stuff that's come with various cookers over the years and all of it's been fine. The more expensive ones such as Kryonaut and NT-2 have dropped temps by a few degrees compared to the others, but as has been said already, as long as you're not running an extreme heat load all should be ok.
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In the past I've tend to stick to arctic silver which has always given me good performance, but the last 2 times I've done HSF installs (my own and a friends) I've used the paste that comes with (or independently bought) for Noctua. I bought a Noctua bracket for my 1700 motherboard so I could reuse my old DH-15 CPU cooler and used their paste and I have great temps.
Actual benchmarks are what matters if you want those, a quick google shows https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/best-thermal-paste Spoiler Grizzly Kryosheet and Duronaut come in tops, but honestly unless you're overclocking aggressively or have insane case temps, it shouldn't matter that much, CPUs are good for like 95 degrees constant usage without damage or wear.
Actual benchmarks are what matters if you want those, a quick google shows https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/best-thermal-paste Spoiler Grizzly Kryosheet and Duronaut come in tops, but honestly unless you're overclocking aggressively or have insane case temps, it shouldn't matter that much, CPUs are good for like 95 degrees constant usage without damage or wear.
I'm not a fan of most thermal paste benchmarks and/or reviews - some thermal pastes really do benefit from burn-in periods and/or thermal cycles longer/more than a reviewer can realistically accommodate and far too often they use the same application methods for all pastes out of a misguided sense of "consistency" when there can be a small but in the context of these charts meaningful difference when using the optimal application method per paste. And reviewers who persist with hand spreading all pastes will always get certain TG products at the top of their benchmarks because those pastes are well suited to that method while some other pastes are NOT. They also generally don't reflect well the long term stability of the pastes - some pastes benchmark very well but will need re-applying frequently whereas another paste which might be close but not quite as good might last 10x as long before needing reapplying.
For example while I've largely moved on from using it AS5 does far better if you properly apply it (many reviewers do not) and give it a few hours and multiple thermal cycles to do its thing (most reviewers do not) and would move up the charts considerably if tested under those conditions.
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True, I agree. I was going to add to my post (but didn't because it's mostly feels) that it's my OPINION that they could probably do that test again and come out with a differently ordered result, simply based on how the paste was applied and other factors. It's a mechanical thing, real world results will differ somewhat from attempt to attempt, all physical/mechanical things have tolerances. They change as they heat and cool and as heavy HSF sag etc.
The only reason I posted it was really because all prior posts are mostly just "I did this and it was OK" which is all I had to offer as well, I wanted to try and quantify the results. Mostly just to see if my suspicions were true, it doesn't really matter than much unless you have a use case that demands absolutely best cooling. Most people just don't.