State of Thermal Pastes 2014

86 5.0L

86 5.0L

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Nov 13, 2006
Messages
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I have a few syringes of different pastes all old stuff(AS5, IC Diamond, CM generic) all over 2-3 years old. Im about to start building and refreshing some rigs and was wondering what is the new paste on the block or should I stick with a fresh tube of an old classic? Thanks
 
for me the best are Shin Etsu G751 and Shin Etsu X23-7762. followed pretty close for Noctua NT-H1.
 
Noctua NT-H1 is the only paste I use anymore. Its $10 a tube, performance difference between it and others are negligible.
 
AC5 has been my TIM of choice for a while and I believe it to be right there in the top 1%. That Shin Etsu is also excellent. I've used a couple others but AC5 just always works superbly so I just stick with it.
 
I always just stick with Ceramique: you get within a degree of the most exotic pastes while not costing you much cash or effort in application.
 
My take: All the big name pastes (including ones you listed) are very close to each other in temps (aka it's not really going to matter) and if you want it to matter any more than it should, then you step right into liquid metal territory (indigo xtreme / liquid pro/ liquid ultra)
 
I tend to use indigo xtreme, but when it comes to thermal paste I don't have much of a preference. I've tried most of the major brands, and they all perform similarly. If I have to use paste I like non conductive stuff like mx2 or mx4, mainly for convenience.
 
I find the old tubes dry up, my AS5 is relegated to mounting rectifiers and audio drivers and such now...way too thick for CPU use, but probably still better than the white crap
 
After using all the top dollar TiM's... I ended up back with ceramique. Its cheap, easy to cleanup and performs 99% the same. No reason to get fancy with thermal paste...
 
babochee said:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Thermal-Compound-Roundup-February-2012/1490/5

AS5 is still near the top while IC Diamond isnt too far behind... you really can't go wrong nor will you have much improvement purchasing more, I'd imagine.
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AS-5 has a few problems that keep it from being on my short-list of thermal pastes.

- There's cure-time involved that requires multiple thermal cycles to "set" the paste.
- The application is only good for a couple years, and then has to be re-applied to avoid degradation.
- By the time it's time to re-apply, the contents of a tube of AS-5 will tend to have separated and becomes mostly-worthless.

I've switched to MX-4 instead. It has none of the above issues.
 
jmilcher said:
After using all the top dollar TiM's... I ended up back with ceramique. Its cheap, easy to cleanup and performs 99% the same. No reason to get fancy with thermal paste...
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When you get like 25g tubes for 8 bucks of this stuff it just seals the deal. For more esoteric TIM's, I like NT-H1, PK-1, MX-2, TX-2 which are all pretty inexpensive and easy to find but Ceramique is moreso and I think mounting technique has more to do with temps than actual conductivity. For the longest time everyone was pimping manual spreading but it turns out to create air bubbles and especially with IHS, the line method beats all.
 
Unknown-One said:
AS-5 has a few problems that keep it from being on my short-list of thermal pastes.

- There's cure-time involved that requires multiple thermal cycles to "set" the paste.
- The application is only good for a couple years, and then has to be re-applied to avoid degradation.
- By the time it's time to re-apply, the contents of a tube of AS-5 will tend to have separated and becomes mostly-worthless.

I've switched to MX-4 instead. It has none of the above issues.
Click to expand...

Interesting, I never gave it much thought. I just use whatever comes with Noctua or Prolimatech heatsinks.

MX-4 carbon-based -- isn't silver a better conductor than carbon?

How does it degrade? It's just a patch of silver between the cpu & heatsink. There's some solvent to keep it liquid so it comes out of the syringe as a paste. And the solvent just evaporates eventually.
 
Unknown-One said:
AS-5 has a few problems that keep it from being on my short-list of thermal pastes.

- There's cure-time involved that requires multiple thermal cycles to "set" the paste.
- The application is only good for a couple years, and then has to be re-applied to avoid degradation.
- By the time it's time to re-apply, the contents of a tube of AS-5 will tend to have separated and becomes mostly-worthless.

I've switched to MX-4 instead. It has none of the above issues.
Click to expand...

+1

I use MX-4 as my primary go-to for everything other than core->IHS. What originally sold me on MX-4 was that it's non-capacitive and non-conductive, so that if I made a mistake I wouldn't short something, but you've mentioned all the other reasons why I love it.
 
Been using NT-H1 recently and have found it to be perfectly fine. The difference between even a mid-level paste and the best paste is never going to make or break temps, let alone the even smaller differences between top level products. Variability in application and mounting is probably way bigger performance variable than the paste itself.

Except cheese... cheese is the clear winner
 
Activate: AMD said:
Been using NT-H1 recently and have found it to be perfectly fine. The difference between even a mid-level paste and the best paste is never going to make or break temps, let alone the even smaller differences between top level products. Variability in application and mounting is probably way bigger performance variable than the paste itself.

Except cheese... cheese is the clear winner
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Sharp cheddar tends to perform better than mild.
 
PliotronX said:
Sharp cheddar tends to perform better than mild.
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I vote for buttery Swiss without the holes.

When testing I temporarily run without TIM because I don't like cleaning up, runs a few degrees higher, but works just fine.
 
I'm surprised to see recommendation for AS5 because I've read a number of paste round-ups that say it is considerably obsolete.
 
Links? Just got a tube of as5, might return it for nt-h1
 
In most of the roundups I've seen, AS5 remained competitive enough to use. It's not the best paste, but it's still good.

http://skinneelabs.com/2011-thermal-paste-review-comparison/3/ - AS5 performed well under ideal conditions = "great contact performance." But not quite as well under typical CPU mounting conditions: http://skinneelabs.com/2011-thermal-paste-review-comparison/2/

There have been some more recent tests of other pastes. SkinneeLabs had stopped testing a long while back.

I like pastes that are less viscous and thus generally easier to apply. AS5 is easy to apply. MX-2 is very easy to apply. Several of the top performers on the chart are also easy to apply.

Edit: The above-mentioned noctua paste was tested.
 
Tom's Hardware said:
This is one of the few pastes on the market that still sports silver as an ingredient. However, it shows its age and does not keep up with the best pastes out there today. Based on its performance, it seems overpriced.
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AS results:

closed loop liquid, high mounting pressure

3 degrees higher than Liquid Pro and Liquid Ultra
2 1/2 higher than Liquid Metal Pad
Just over 2 degrees higher than Gelid GC Extreme
2 degrees higher than Prolimateh PK-3, Phanteks PH-NDC, and Cooler Master X1 EF

air cooler, high mounting pressure

5.2 degrees higher than Liquid Pro
4.2 higher than Liquid Ultra
2.4 higher than Liquid Metal Pad
1.9 higher than Gelid
1.6 higher than Prolimatek PK-3, Phanteka, and Cooler Master

air cooler, low mounting pressure

4.7 higher than Liquid Pro
3.7 higher than Liquid Ultra
2.2 higher than Liquid Metal Pad
1 higher than Gelid
.8 higher than Prolimatek PK-3 and Arctic MX-4

GPU, air cooled, medium pressure

(Liquid Pro and Liquid Ultra not tested, probably due to aluminum)
7.5 degrees higher than Liquid Metal Pad
4.5 higher than Prolimatech PK-3 and Gelid
4 higher than Phantek
3.5 higher than Xigmatek PTI-G4512, Cooler Master, Prolimatech PK-2, and Thermalright CF III
 
I use Arctic mx-4

its relatively cheap, easy to apply, doesn't dry out, performs well.

Another favorite is Antec Formula 6, performance better than mx-4, but its hard to apply, and its rather expensive. I love the fact I can get a tube of this at staples.

Shin Etsu G751 is the best thermal paste i've used, but its expensive, thick/hard to apply, has provided me the best temperature results.
 
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got a syringe of NT-H1 to test in 2010 because it was dirty cheap, been using only NT-H1 ever since still because is dirty cheap :p
 
SIS said:
AS results:

closed loop liquid, high mounting pressure
...
Click to expand...

Nice summary, supporting that the original Liquid Pro may indeed perform slightly better than Liquid Ultra (as has been reported by many).

Are those the Toms Hardware results? I seem to remember similar wording and results in that roundup, and it was a rather large review.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermal-paste-performance-benchmark,3616-17.html - here it is.

Heh, a lot of people don't like TH, but I that's a useful review.
 
liquid pro is - "Alloy of gallium, indium, rhodium, silver, zinc and tin".
http://www.coollaboratory.com/pdf/sa...o_englisch.pdf

liquid ultra is "Alloy of gallium, indium, rhodium, silver, zinc and tin, bismuth; suspended in a graphite-copper matrix"
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Wiki said:
The price of rhodium is historically highly variable. In 2007, rhodium cost approximately eight times more than gold, 450 times more than silver, and 27,250 times more than copper by weight. In 2008, the price briefly rose above $10,000 per ounce ($350,000 per kilogram). The economic slowdown of the 3rd quarter of 2008 pushed rhodium prices sharply back below $1,000 per ounce ($35,000 per kilogram); they rebounded to $2,750 by early 2010 ($97,000 per kilogram) (over twice the gold price), but in late 2013, the prices were a bit lower than $1000.
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I doubt there's much rhodium involved, given its price.
 
Ended up getting a giant syringe of MX-4 as im doing vrm and chipset watercooling along with cpu and gpu and a ps3
 
As others have said, AS5 is still viable, but given its cure time etc..if you're buying something new today, you have better options. There area a lot of "pretty good" options out there, MX-4 for instance, but there hasn't been a huge amount of TIM shootouts the way there was a few years back - I think the TomsHardware comparison is the widest ranging of 2014 thus far. With this in mind, here's what I believe to be the best paste options around.

"Super Enthusiasts" - If every 0.1 degree counts and you don't mind more expense or a tricky install, Coollaboratory products (Liquid Metal Pads, Liquid Metal Pro, Liquid Metal Ultra) are the top of the line. Don't forget these are conductive electrically, and can NOT be used with any aluminum coolers.

"Enthusiast performance standard pastes" - If you want the best temps around with a "standard" install process, the following are well regarded. They are known to be relatively easy to work with and generally beneficial in most usage cases (ie from lapped, perfectly installed custom water blocks to sufficiently installed air coolers and even beyond to things like GPUs).

Prolimatech PK-3
Gelid GC-Extreme
Innovation Cooling (IC) Diamond 24

The above seem to routinely take the highest places in the most comparisons I've seen for "standard" pastes and the differences between them in terms of temp are often less than a degree (or sometimes even a tenth of a degree) either way. I've heard that some are a little easier or harder to work with, more or less viscous, or pull ahead using certain install types (ie "bead and press" install vs "spread out manually" install), but overall they all seem to be good options for a high end TIM in 2014. Furthermore, they all seem to be around the same price in the US, at around $13-15 for a 4 to 5 gram tube, on Amazon w/ Prime shipping.

Hope this helps!
 
I feel your summary is accurate.

I'd like to add that Indigo Xtreme is probably at the top of the heap as well.

Also: I've had a hell of a difficult time trying to apply IC-Diamond - my tubes (purchased at separate times even) all arrived dried out and required extensive water-heating and hair-dryer usage. It was ridiculous. The Shin-Etsu 7783D stuff I had also quickly became a pain to work with.

For this reason I prefer less viscous pastes. It'll be easier to get a good application and mount.
 
Archmage said:
I feel your summary is accurate.

I'd like to add that Indigo Xtreme is probably at the top of the heap as well.

Also: I've had a hell of a difficult time trying to apply IC-Diamond - my tubes (purchased at separate times even) all arrived dried out and required extensive water-heating and hair-dryer usage. It was ridiculous. The Shin-Etsu 7783D stuff I had also quickly became a pain to work with.

For this reason I prefer less viscous pastes. It'll be easier to get a good application and mount.
Click to expand...

Weird, you must have gotten some older paste because I had no issue applying my Icy Diamond 7. I boiled some water in a tea kettle, then poured a cup and put the tube in that for a few moments. Applying it was just as easy as other pastes after heating it. I thought about using a hair dryer to pre-heat the cpu before application but I found it really wasn't necessary.
 
drklu said:
Weird, you must have gotten some older paste because I had no issue applying my Icy Diamond 7.
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Yea, I've seen some video and pics of IC-Diamond and it did look acceptable - nothing like the 3 tubes I got. I suppose I'll have to admit that I just had some bad luck and I'm still bitter about it...heh...
 
I used toothpaste once like 10 years ago in a pinch (and only temporarily). it was only like 2c behind as5, but I cant remember what brand, sorry!
 
Coolaboratory liquid ultra is best I have ever used.
 
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