Thermal Paste

ijb1989

ijb1989

ijb1989

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Joined
2 Nov 2020
Posts
86
Hi guys

had to take out my cpu to flash my motherboard today and will need to clean and reapply thermal paste to cpu and cooler tomorrow. Just wondering whether there’s any difference between the various different brands?

I’ve got a Ryzen 5600x which came with the wraith cooler and already had paste applied

any help appreciated
 
Yes there are differences, not massive though, usually ±1-4C at the most for the main brands. My go-to is Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, but others like Arctic MX-4, Arctic Silver 5, IC Diamond etc are all really good.
 
no idea what said:
Yes there are differences, not massive though, usually ±1-4C at the most for the main brands. My go-to is Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, but others like Arctic MX-4, Arctic Silver 5, IC Diamond etc are all really good.
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Cheers - I’ve got a tube of MX 4 coming tomorrow as that’s what Amazon had in. Presume this will be ok! Is it just a little dot in the middle of the cpu before putting the cooler on?
Also how important is cleaning the old paste off?
 
the old paste will have dried up, that pea in the centre needs to get smooshed out wont work very well if there's crusty remnants of the old paste
 
Very important to clean the CPU and heatsink off the old thermal paste.

Pea sized blob in the middle of new paste, will work fine for the 5600X yes.
 
Sparx said:
Very important to clean the CPU and heatsink off the old thermal paste.
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A basic point often overlooked by people new to re-pasting, so make sure you do this if you didn't already know!
You can use isopropyl alcohol with a Q-tip to do this. Some people prefer coffee filters as there's less chance of leaving lint behind
 
The only really bad one I have ever seen is some numpty who used plumbers silicon grease, which you may or may not know is a thermal insulator.
 
no idea what said:
IC Diamond
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I have used IC Diamond since 2011, I built my own workstations / servers. It's initial performance is better then MX4, better still i've never once had to replace the paste - the paste is true fit and forget! However there are major problems sourcing the paste in UK, to make it worse Innovation Cooling don't even reply to my emails. I've now abandoned IC Diamond paste.
 
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ijb1989 said:
Hi guys

had to take out my cpu to flash my motherboard today and will need to clean and reapply thermal paste to cpu and cooler tomorrow. Just wondering whether there’s any difference between the various different brands?

I’ve got a Ryzen 5600x which came with the wraith cooler and already had paste applied

any help appreciated
Click to expand...

You don't need to remove the CPU to flash a motherboard even when using the bios flashback etc.
 
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