Cooler Master is promoting its new CryoFuze Violet high performance thermal paste. One of the interesting aspects of the product is that it moves thermal pastes away from gray gloops into the more glamorous world of violet amalgams. Not coincidentally, the thermal compound’s color is something like Cooler Master's signature shade.
Beyond the headlining color, which hardcore PC enthusiasts and DIYers aren’t going to care about (much), Cooler Master claims some decent technical specifications for its purply paste. Its thermal conductivity value is 12.6 W/mK, which is at the higher-end for pastes that aren’t electrically conductive. Interestingly, Cooler Master CryoFuze Nano has a slightly higher 14 W/mK rating.
For reference, in our recent roundup of 90 pastes tested and ranked, our favorite from the whole bunch offered 11.2 W/mK. Moreover, industry standard bearers like Arctic MX-5 offers 6.0 W/mK — not all conductivity is rated equally, in other words.
(Image credit: Cooler Master)
Of course there are a multitude of other properties that differentiate pastes good and bad. Other qualities of the CryoFuze Violet include its easy application, thanks to a balanced viscosity. Cooler Master also says the paste is exceptionally stable at a wide range of temperatures (-50 to +240 degrees Celcius). It claims that it won’t dry out, and that it is non corrosive.
CryoFuze Violet uses nanoparticles to increase thermal conductivity, but it is by no means pioneering this material technology. Our two favorite pastes, ProlimaTech PK-3 Nano Aluminum and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, use this tech, as does the recently released Alphacool Apex.
Cooler Master provided an instructional video, making clear once and for all what it felt was the best way to apply thermal paste, when it launched the first CryoFuze Nano. According to the video you should squirt lots of paste on your CPU before poking it around with a plastic paddle. The process looks a lot like an amateur baker icing a cake. But then last week we saw Igor Wallossek painstakingly measuring and manipulating thermal paste on a GPU, and he found the ‘buttering’ of the chip pasting method to be the worst possible (a simple sausage was best).
As mentioned above, we compiled a Best Thermal Paste for CPUs 2022 list a few weeks ago, checking over 90 alternatives. Until we have had time to scrutinize Cooler Master’s CryoFuze Violet amalgam, it might be wise to stick with something gray.
Cooler Master didn’t mention pricing or availability, but we spotted a CryoFuze Violet 2g twin-pack available via Newegg, priced at $30.99 (ships from Hong Kong). Hopefully when it reaches local distributors it will be more affordable.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
Got a 2g tube for $5.99 the middle dot application method will always be my go to and no one can change my mind. It's been keeping my 5800x3d in the mid 30s idle (ambient temp in my office is usually ~15c) and never goes above 70c while gaming on a 280mm AIO. I'd say for the price it's great paste much better than the Artic mx-2 paste I was using before.
