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Thermal Paste Comparison, Part Two: 39 Products Get Tested

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October 20, 2013 9:00:09 PM

It's time for the numbers. In addition to testing liquid metal compounds and thermally conductive adhesives, each paste is discussed on its own merits before we chart out the results of four usage cases. After all, these products behave differently.

Thermal Paste Comparison, Part Two: 39 Products Get Tested : Read more

More about : thermal paste comparison part products tested

October 20, 2013 9:15:09 PM

As good as the first part!
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October 20, 2013 9:28:52 PM

I loved the toothpaste part. What about Vicks Vaporub? I wonder how that thing would do.
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October 20, 2013 9:30:40 PM

Yeaaaa! nice in depth article. Disappointed that cheese was not use as a paste :( 
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October 20, 2013 9:33:08 PM

Can you test Antec Formula 7 NANO DIAMOND Thermal Compound?
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October 20, 2013 9:41:30 PM

Great article guys! As a reader for over 10 years pretty much daily, this reminds me of the old Tom's Hardware. These type of in depth articles on enthusiast products are what I love.
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October 20, 2013 9:55:47 PM

A great article, agree the application of the compound, not the compound itself is most important.

Like ledpellet I too am curious about these diamond compounds. Wonder if it offers similar results to the Coollaboratory products with an easier application, or if the results simply don't justify the price. E.g in Australia, Innovation Cooling IC7 Diamond 7 Carat Thermal Compound Paste - 1.5G can be found for as much as $25. The cheapest I have managed to find it for is $15. For that price it would want to be good considering the leading GELID GC Extreme, can be found for around $8.
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October 20, 2013 9:58:05 PM

Adding Ceramique would be greatly appreciated!
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October 20, 2013 10:03:39 PM

Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra isn't all that good after a year of hard use. In fact, it completely hardens / dries. On my X9100 after 9 months of nearly 24/7 100% load, I started seeing high temps and after 1 year auto shut downs while crunching. Turns out it was shutting off because it hit the 105 C thermal protection.
Opened it up; thermal compound was as hard as a rock. has to pocket knife blade and sand it down.
So for longevity it sucks. That is something to consider, not just initial performance, but performance months and years down the road. Especially for laptops that aren't designed to be opened up frequently for repasting.

After trying Liquid Ultra many times and having it fail on me, I've put on Arctic MX-2 that has a supposed 8 year durability rating. Initial performance is great, we'll see how it lasts (been 3 weeks so far).
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October 20, 2013 10:06:55 PM

CLU and Arctic MX-4 are both great products. MX-2 and MX-4 can often be found free after rebate so they are an exceptional value.
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October 20, 2013 10:45:29 PM

More things like this! Articles like this will keep me here more often!
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October 20, 2013 10:59:01 PM

Was really hoping you'd test IC Diamond, since that's what I've always used. Bummer.
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October 20, 2013 11:08:33 PM

You could do a giveaway for the thermal pastes :p  and include Canada this time :) 
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October 20, 2013 11:13:55 PM

would have liked to see a test without thermal compound. Have used noctua nt-h1 for ages now, no curing time sells it for me.
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October 20, 2013 11:20:41 PM

All the hype aside, could Tom's include an actual industrial "Silicone Heat Transfer Compound", such as the one by MG Chemicals :http://www.mgchemicals.com/products/greases-and-lubrica..., any of the future comparisons. If this stuff is good to use in mass industrial applications, how can it not be any better then let's say AS5.

Plus, AS5 can short out your mobo if some of it gets on the PCB and it costs 10 times as much as the industrial stuff and I don't think it is 10 times better.
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October 20, 2013 11:25:27 PM

The good old Ceramique should have been in the list. Nevertheless nice article. Disappointed with the tooth paste. Expecting more from it.
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October 20, 2013 11:27:30 PM

Coollaboratory Liquid MetalPad sounds ideal.
Might there be a way to achieve proper bond by heating the pad as well as getting the cpu hot?
I guessing this would be most ideal for GPUs though, as they want to get very hot.
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October 21, 2013 1:20:38 AM

Great article!

BTW, is the Cooler Master Extreme Fusion X1 available in the USA?
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October 21, 2013 1:50:55 AM

It would have been nice to see the stock thermal paste on the Intel cooler too...
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October 21, 2013 1:57:43 AM

I just ordered the liquid pro and I'm already starting to regret it...
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October 21, 2013 2:46:02 AM

You guys should see how big tube of thermal paste and how big is the thermal tape that are available inside AMD. All of this product are obsolete.
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October 21, 2013 2:58:28 AM

Nice article ... one small boo-boo "leaning toward the software compounds." on page 21 should be softer.
-Bruce
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October 21, 2013 2:59:40 AM

Standard thermal paste is good enough to conduct heat but buy high aluminum or silver content based thermal paste will serve your HSF and CPU coolly. I'm talking about industrial grade thermal compound. Try to get one from the manufacturers. 3rd Party based like CM, Arctic Silver and more still not good enough for our HSF and CPU. This is because when your CPU heat up so fast and cool down rapidly, your thermal compound may degrade fast until you thermal compound is flow to the sides of your CPU's IHS.
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October 21, 2013 3:05:29 AM

Also can try propanediol although is liquid but good for CPU benchmarking for setup in testbench mode.
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October 21, 2013 4:06:46 AM

FANTASTIC article! Extremely informative and helpful, especially for newbies or anyone like me who hadn't ever seen the liquid metal compounds in action before.

I'm personally partial to Noctua's NT-H1... I've gotten pretty nice results with it, and I love how easy it is to use compared to other compounds I've had. Might try the Gelid GC extreme at some point in the future when I run out of Noctua's NT-H1, though.

Also, a big +1 for the lulz of using toothpaste and denture adhesive :lol: 
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October 21, 2013 4:31:26 AM

I've read a couple of similar articles in the last 10 years, and the results stand, I see. :) 

Of the non-conventional pastes I've seen used in these tests, the best so far is lipstick.
In the short run it's almost as good as thermal paste.
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October 21, 2013 4:36:12 AM

TehDudeMan said:
Great article guys! As a reader for over 10 years pretty much daily, this reminds me of the old Tom's Hardware. These type of in depth articles on enthusiast products are what I love.


I agree ... this is a great article.

I'd like to see new products getting added to build up a really comprehensive list.

Well done Igor.
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October 21, 2013 4:46:18 AM

I'm interested in the GC-Extreme product but wondered what application method you used?
I can see you suggest heating to 100F-120F but do you then spread it with the spreader or use the lentil ball approach ?
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October 21, 2013 5:04:44 AM

Very good Igor!

As one that has conducted these tests myself I know you are glad it's over!

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/274824-29-thermal-compound-roundup-2011

I am extremely impressed with the detailed coverage of using the liquid metal products and how difficult it is to remove them and what it does to your CPUs heat spreader, tossing the CPU warranty in the process by just choosing those thermal compounds.

As we all know lapping a CPU is a warranty loss and once the liquid metal is thoroughly removed from the CPU, you may as well go ahead and lap it, because your warranty is gone.

One thing I wanted to share regarding the liquid metal compounds from my testing is I was warned to test the liquid metals last and I did, and since the liquid metal was tested last, I left Liquid Metal Ultra on my testing CPU under an air cooler.

I was delaying cleaning it off as I already knew what I was in for, so it was left running on that machine for a solid month.

Before I pulled the heat sink I decided to duplicate the test conditions with the exact ambient the other tests were run, to see if the results would be the same and was shocked to see the thermal performance had degraded as the liquid metal was loosing it's moisture content.

From my own discoveries the liquid metal long term thermal conductivity degrades the longer it is used while some of the other non liquid metal compounds do not.

That's something you could test yourself if you're curious.

Anyhoo, Excellent work Sir, Congratulations for a job well done! Ryan

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October 21, 2013 5:20:45 AM

dragonfang18 said:
I loved the toothpaste part. What about Vicks Vaporub? I wonder how that thing would do.

Eucalyptus oil is pretty volatile so it would dry off in seconds once the CPU starts heating up. I would expect performance to match "nothing at all" after this happens.
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October 21, 2013 6:09:10 AM

Good read. I enjoyed it. That ending picture though, jeez. Small fortune in pastes.

Off topic, I'd be willing to take any amount of it off your hands, I never seem to have enough paste around the house.
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October 21, 2013 6:37:37 AM

Artic Silver 5, good for a budget build if you have a tube around.
But I stopped using that stuff years ago. Times changed, pastes advanced.
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October 21, 2013 6:38:44 AM

"What will I do with all the partially-used syringes and paste packs? Honestly, I don’t know. There's enough of this stuff around to last a lifetime..."

I'll take the MX-4. I like that stuff.
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October 21, 2013 6:58:05 AM

ledpellet said:
Can you test Antec Formula 7 NANO DIAMOND Thermal Compound?


I am a bit sad that they didn't have the IC Diamond TIM in the mix. That stuff was some of the best I ever used.

Am currently using the Zalman STG2 which has proven pretty good so far.
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October 21, 2013 7:09:09 AM

I am using ELECTROLUBE non silicon heat transfer compound. It is ultra cheap, $7 for 10ml. Very useful when you are maintaining several computers.

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October 21, 2013 7:29:16 AM

radiovan said:
All the hype aside, could Tom's include an actual industrial "Silicone Heat Transfer Compound", such as the one by MG Chemicals :http://www.mgchemicals.com/products/greases-and-lubrica..., any of the future comparisons. If this stuff is good to use in mass industrial applications, how can it not be any better then let's say AS5.

Plus, AS5 can short out your mobo if some of it gets on the PCB and it costs 10 times as much as the industrial stuff and I don't think it is 10 times better.


A few things:

1) Have you looked at the technical specifications of that particular paste ? It says, the thermal conductivity is only 0.773-0.657 W/mK, which is about a order of magnitude LESS than tested products (AS5 at 9 W/mK and MX4 at 8.5 W/mK).

2) The compound is only made from zinc oxide and a binder oil. This is no different from the cheap Zalman compounds (the generic white paste).

3) These pastes are meant for low power density applications, I have 2 tubs, and they are piss poor on computers (high power density applications), but just fine for what they are made for - cooling very low powered circuits like voltage regulators (not for computer use, but analog use), opamps, low powered transistors (like for amplifiers). This is the stuff you find inside your stereo, between the transistors/chip amps and the heatsink, where the chip is dissipating about 50 watts of heat maximally (and not prolonged) over a surface area 10 times larger than a CPU-heatsink contact.

4) The AS5 isn't conductive. It doesn't contain un-oxidized silver. It is slightly capacitive, more so than other compounds. But it isn't going to burn out a computer by shorting it, it is not a conductor. That said, I much prefer Ceramique 2 (the original Ceramique was terrible) or MX-4.
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October 21, 2013 7:35:33 AM

danwat1234 said:
Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra isn't all that good after a year of hard use. In fact, it completely hardens / dries. On my X9100 after 9 months of nearly 24/7 100% load, I started seeing high temps and after 1 year auto shut downs while crunching. Turns out it was shutting off because it hit the 105 C thermal protection.
Opened it up; thermal compound was as hard as a rock. has to pocket knife blade and sand it down.
So for longevity it sucks. That is something to consider, not just initial performance, but performance months and years down the road. Especially for laptops that aren't designed to be opened up frequently for repasting.

After trying Liquid Ultra many times and having it fail on me, I've put on Arctic MX-2 that has a supposed 8 year durability rating. Initial performance is great, we'll see how it lasts (been 3 weeks so far).


Those liquid metal-type solutions have a nasty habit of eating away (via Galvanic corrosion, I think) the metal of the cooler+CPU heatspreader, especially when a certain combination of alloys are present (presumably due to the choice of the cooler). This pits the surfaces, and hardens the liquid metal in between. Not to mention that in some cases, the heatsink becomes "welded" to the CPU after prolonged corrosion.

Perhaps that happened to some extent to your setup ? Either way, I would not recommend these types of thermal gap fillers.
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October 21, 2013 7:38:29 AM

I would like to see which of these pastes dry fast. Is their anyway to cook these pastes for a month or 2 at 80 Celsius? I know that AS5's drying out point is legendary. Just wonder if any of these pastes can match it long term. Also which paste requires reapplying after a year?
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October 21, 2013 7:41:00 AM

The industry uses centigrade which glancing at the charts would imply but the article consistently refer to Kelvin in the article. The two are quite a bit different but the latter unfamiliar to most PC users ..... the absolute Kelvin scale is based upon absolute 0, Centigrade puts 0 at the freezing point of water.

K=C+273.15

Curing should be addressed ..... Could pick up a few pointers here:

http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=co...

http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=co...
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October 21, 2013 7:51:14 AM

JackNaylorPE said:
Ya use Centigrade in the charts but consistently refer to Kelvin in the article. The two are quite a bit different ..... the absolute Kelvin scale is based upon absolute 0, Centigrade puts 0 at the freezing point of water.

K=C+273.15

Curing should be addressed ..... Could pick up a few pointers here:

http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=co...

http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=co...


From my cursory read, most temperatures were expressed as differences, in which case, there is no difference between picking Celsius or Kelvin, because the absolute difference (Delta T) is the same in either scale.

But I agree, in general, an author should pick a unit, and stick with it from there on.
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October 21, 2013 8:00:54 AM

You're right .... I fixed the comment to make it more clear
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October 21, 2013 8:01:02 AM

THG ....any fix forthcoming for the connection burps while posting requires "checking in" at a dozen or so other sites resulting in hangs and double posts ?
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October 21, 2013 8:08:15 AM

I got a little disapointed in the AS5. Good to know the MX-2 is a very good all-rounder.

If you should give a prize to something for the common enthusiast to use, is the MX-2.

Cheers!
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October 21, 2013 8:10:08 AM

elbert said:
I would like to see which of these pastes dry fast. Is their anyway to cook these pastes for a month or 2 at 80 Celsius? I know that AS5's drying out point is legendary. Just wonder if any of these pastes can match it long term. Also which paste requires reapplying after a year?


The curing time for AS5 is probably why I moved away from it.

Also why I am surprised they didn't include IC Diamond which has a curing time of about 1 hour which is nothing compared to up to a year for AS5.
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October 21, 2013 8:15:26 AM

Another vote to get the Antec Formula 7 tested. It's on the expensive end so it would be nice to get it into this comparison and see if the price is really worth it.
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October 21, 2013 8:19:37 AM

Tip of the Hat for all that went in to the testing and charting of the products.
Really surprising how close most TIM is despite the marketing hype.
To me it comes down to getting the perfect mount VS the most expensive paste.
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October 21, 2013 8:22:40 AM

elbert said:
I would like to see which of these pastes dry fast. Is their anyway to cook these pastes for a month or 2 at 80 Celsius? I know that AS5's drying out point is legendary. Just wonder if any of these pastes can match it long term. Also which paste requires reapplying after a year?


I always "cook" my pastes by running at a higher OC and voltage than would normally use for 24/7 ....cycling it up over 80C and cooling down to room temp 5 or 6 times. I save those settings in the BIOS tools section and rerun after 6 months.

jimmysmitty said:


Also why I am surprised they didn't include IC Diamond which has a curing time of about 1 hour which is nothing compared to up to a year for AS5.


gonchuki said:
Another vote to get the Antec Formula 7 tested. It's on the expensive end so it would be nice to get it into this comparison and see if the price is really worth it.


I'm more surprised at the absence of MX-4, TX-4 and Shin Etsu



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October 21, 2013 8:55:38 AM

Wow with some of those products, talk about making a really simple process appear 20 times more difficult than it really is.

Been using MX-4....cos it's cheap.
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October 21, 2013 11:08:37 AM

daglesj said:
Wow with some of those products, talk about making a really simple process appear 20 times more difficult than it really is.

Been using MX-4....cos it's cheap.


Some are pretty hard. I have run into some that are very thick and hard to get out.

The IC Diamond was very hard to get out and you need to leave it sitting on the CPU for 10 minutes before you put the IHS on. I also had the same experience with the Noctus TIM as if you wait a bit after getting it out of the tube it will spread easier and better.
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October 21, 2013 11:08:51 AM

The missing thermal compounds some of you are asking about were more than likely not submitted to be tested.

The companies submitting their products to be tested are also giving their permission to do so.

It's not like Toms went out and bought every compound out there to be tested and left some on the shelves so to speak.

Some thermal compounds like IC Diamond require a guaranteed 50lb clamping pressure before they submit to testing, I ran into that with my thermal compound testing in 2011.

When I agreed to meet their clamping requirements of 50lbs but informed them the other compounds would also be equally tested at the same 50lbs of pressure, I got no, no, the other compounds don't need 50lbs.

None the less they were all going to be run at the same pressure so IC Diamond refused to submit a testing sample.

Wonder Why?

Because they already know what's going to happen when thinner consistency compounds are clamped to 50lbs of pressure, they simply stomp IC Diamonds performance.

If you don't believe what I'm saying do your own testing!

If a company is invited by Toms to submit a product for testing and they don't submit a sample, then it's not in the roundup, simple as that.

All thermal compound is supposed to do, is fill the microscopic imperfections between the 2 contacting surfaces filling the microscopic air voids and that's it.

Replace the air with a good thermal conductor, to transmit the heat from one surface to the other, no thick layer!

A thick layer is bad!

The least used you can get away with the better the cooling performance, I don't care what brand it is.
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