Best thermal paste?

Title says it all, last i heard was the arctic silver 5, dunno which one is the best now

i mean theres not much of a price difference, and if there is even the slightest performance boost, its still a step up, thanks. I cant believe people make it a big deal about the price of thermal paste, i mean its like 5-10$, whats the big deal? lol. Oh yes, i forgot to ask, whats the best way to apply thermal paste? I do believe its just sticking one drop in the middle and letting the cpu cooler naturally spread it out

well i always thought it was best to smooth it out with the edge of something, like a business card...

OCZ Freeze user here.

It's a wee bit less viscous than AS5 - I dab a 'rice grain' across the spreader with a small dot close on either side of the 'grain' - looks like a semi-colon, sorta - LOL

The very best thermal paste is home made paste with diamond powder mixed in with it. There was a post on this forum about it and there are web pages about it but I will leave it up to you to look it up.

I use IC Diamond 7 Carat Thermal Compound:

http://www.innovationcooling.com/

Here's a link to the xbitlabs technical review and test results of just about every compound made:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/c [...] undup.html

Here's a link to one of the online vendors:

http://www.heatsinkfactory.com/ic- [...] 16605.html

The compound works very well with my Thermalright Ultra 120 cpu heatsink.

To be fair there are other thermal compounds that are very good. For the typical user a temperature drop of a few degrees Centigrade won't make much of a difference. For a hardcore gamer into serious overclocking on a suicidal mission to save the planet from alien invaders it might make a difference.

I also used IC Diamond on the northbridge and southbridge chipsets of my motherboard. I haven't tried it on a gpu yet. If you look at the xbitlabs review you'll see IC Diamond didn't do as well on the gpu. Some of the other compounds did better.

EDIT - I just bought and XFX HD 4770 graphics card. It is a dual slot version that exhausts hot air out one of the rear panel slots. It's also an energy efficient card so I don't know if it would be worth the effort.

Here is a very good Review on 80-way Thermal Interface Material Performance Test.
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index. [...] &Itemid=62

The Review is takes into consideration the Curing time of each Thermal Compound and post them. Here are two examples:

Arctic Silver 5 Polysynthetic Thermal Compound (4)
(4) Arctic Silver 5 Application Instructions (up to 200-hours recommended curing time.

Tuniq TX-3 (0)
(0) No Curing Time or Special Application Suggested.

OCZ freeze extreme, non conductive, easy to use and does a fantastic job at that, no curing time and not very expensive, better than AS5 in my opinion in cooling (2-3 degrees cooler now with it) Just dont use any KAK that comes with any components in small plastic packets, it wont work well...

Roughly equivalent to asking someone's religion

I'm currently on Shin-Etsu X23-7762. It lowered my temps slightly, but in fairness I didn't give the AS a full run-in before switching.

I pretty much use Arctic Silver AS5 and Ceramique. Both times that was what the local Rat Shack had.

I have noticed little difference between the two. I also have not noticed a significant difference in temperatures before and after the AS5 cured.

Curing time - theoretically AS5 needs about 200 hours and several power on-off (heat-cool) cycles to cure, to set, to whatever to deliver optimum performance (maximum cooling).

problems with AS5:

curing time
must be reapplied every few months for best cooling results
is conductive

i used to have temps of 33*C idle now im at 38*C after 6 months. i suppose you might have to do this with all thermal paste but i hear its especially crappy on AS5.

lol look up benchmarks.... seems like a gimmick to me. *oooo diamonds!!* lol...

Peanut butter.... Skippy smooth seems to work the best. Needs to be cleaned off every so often, but a jar of it lasts a long time if you don't buy any jam...

that would make the IC diamond a bad pick for long livitivity? Since it scratches up your surface anyway, it'll make your CPU even hotter...Most people end up lapping anyway, i probably will lap too

if HDT heatsinks are so good at obtaining low temperatures, why arent they the best coolers on the market? Thanks for the link, ill check it out.

Zalman ZM-STG2 super thermal grease user here, love it. Easy to apply, easy to remove, good cooling.

Different experiences for individual customers equal more companies working, paying their bills and employing more people.
And every time the only word that can be said is "it's a matter of personal preference" (Perhaps a sentence )

Regards .

Here is a Guide for Lapping excerpt below.

More at http://www.overclockersclub.com/guides/lapping/

i think im just going to go with arctic cooling mx-3, unless someone points out theres something better