Anyone else less than impressed with PTM7950?

I decided to give it a shot on my desktop after all the hype and I gotta say... I'm not impressed. I wonder if most people who use it either had a bad paste job, or if I did something wrong. I had Arctic MX-6 on my CPU and it was working fine, but I have a 13900K which is a toasty boy and could always use more cooling. My ASUS GPU apparently uses it from the factory so I decided to give it a shot.

Well, it was a PITA to install, people weren't wrong about that. It is difficult to get the stop layer of plastic off without taking the sheet off as well. I ruined one application and had to try again. But I did finally get it on. Fired up the system, did the "burn-in" process of running Prime95 for 10 minutes, shutting down the system and letting it cool a few times. Then looked at temps and... it's basically the same as the MX-6. They are fine, nothing to worry about, but no real improvement.

Thing is, in addition to being a pain to install, it is quite expensive compared to MX-6. A bigass 4g tube of MX-6 is like $8 and is enough to do a bunch of chips. One sheet of PTM7950 is like $20 and is enough to do maybe 2, assuming you don't screw up an application. It is probably easier for machine application, which is why I would assume companies like ASUS use it, but for human application it seems harder than paste so I just can't see the reason.

I think the consensus was it will edge out good thermal pastes on a desktop due to the presence of the IHS but will do much better with a laptop with the direct die on the heatsink.

It helped my laptop a lot.

I had applied it properly and did not see any better temps, not even close. The only thing going for this stuff is supposedly you don’t have to replace it as often. That alone is not worth it to me. I think it was marketed well and overhyped.

It worked well on my 7900xtx. Havent used it on a CPU.

I used Thermal Grizzly PhaseSheet, and it did way better on my 8400F with a bequiet low profile cooler, but I was having difficulty putting that cooler on my itx board, in a cramped case, so maybe that contributed to poor performance with paste. The bequiet mounting solution doesn't seem to put much pressure down either, which probably doesn't help.

I'm not sure how similar it is to the PTM7950 compound, but that's my sheety experience.

its the ihs. its better for direct contact, like on gpus.
ps: check your mx6 for any separation, that was an issue... or replace it with mx7.

Dreamerbydesign said:

I had applied it properly and did not see any better temps, not even close. The only thing going for this stuff is supposedly you don’t have to replace it as often.

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I've never got that. I've heard geeks claim you need to repaste, but do you really? I have *NEVER* had a server have that as a maintenance item. I've never seen them do it, never had them tell me to do it, and never had a server fail because the CPUs started suddenly getting hot for no reason. I have servers that are quite old and still under warranty too, so if it was needed, you'd think they'd do it.

pendragon1 said:

its the ihs. its better for direct contact, like on gpus.
ps: check your ms6 for any separation, that was an issue... or replace it with mx7.

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I didn't see any separation issues when I took it off. I'm not going to bother to repaste this, the PTM sheet works fine, there's no issues, I just don't see any improvement. I'll look at getting a tube of MX-7 when I next build a system, though given the current price crap that is likely to be awhile.

Sycraft said:

I've never got that. I've heard geeks claim you need to repaste, but do you really? I have *NEVER* had a server have that as a maintenance item. I've never seen them do it, never had them tell me to do it, and never had a server fail because the CPUs started suddenly getting hot for no reason. I have servers that are quite old and still under warranty too, so if it was needed, you'd think they'd do it.


I didn't see any separation issues when I took it off. I'm not going to bother to repaste this, the PTM sheet works fine, there's no issues, I just don't see any improvement. I'll look at getting a tube of MX-7 when I next build a system, though given the current price crap that is likely to be awhile.

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I also in 30+ years of building and maintaining pc’s I have never had a re paste issue. I can recall maybe twice I did it for pc’s that were moved around from site to site and surely got banged around. I’ve never had a failure either from that so the no maintenance part of it wasn’t a selling point for me either.

I just never saw any appreciable benefit to it. I’m convinced it is just clever marketing. If it were that amazing it would be the new as5. Remember when that came out? The whole world thought you were nuts if you weren’t using in 2005. Difference is, that was a great product at the time that lived up to the hype. So everyone talked about, not just a few special social media influencers.

Dreamerbydesign said:

I also in 30+ years of building and maintaining pc’s I have never had a re paste issue. I can recall maybe twice I did it for pc’s that were moved around from site to site and surely got banged around. I’ve never had a failure either from that so the no maintenance part of it wasn’t a selling point for me either.

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Only time I ever saw anything was waaay back in the day with the OG Arctic Silver. My roomate has used it on a system and it started having thermal issues like 3 years later and it had dried out. No idea if he did something wrong, if there was a bad batch, or if that was a problem it had. But ya otherwise? Never seen a problem. Never seen a problem and also never seen it done preventatively. Like Dell, HP, Netapp, etc will warranty systems to 7 years or more these days. Some of them, like Netapp, can be hard core "We will fix your shit in 2 hours of a failure" situation. Ok, well if they were expecting failures of paste, they'd do some kind of preventative maintenance to keep that call from happening... but they don't.

If it wasn't so fiddly to put on I could see the appeal to system builders, but it is, so that combined with the cost makes it something there's no way I can see recommending for a normal system.

Sycraft said:

Only time I ever saw anything was waaay back in the day with the OG Arctic Silver. My roomate has used it on a system and it started having thermal issues like 3 years later and it had dried out. No idea if he did something wrong, if there was a bad batch, or if that was a problem it had. But ya otherwise? Never seen a problem. Never seen a problem and also never seen it done preventatively. Like Dell, HP, Netapp, etc will warranty systems to 7 years or more these days. Some of them, like Netapp, can be hard core "We will fix your shit in 2 hours of a failure" situation. Ok, well if they were expecting failures of paste, they'd do some kind of preventative maintenance to keep that call from happening... but they don't.

If it wasn't so fiddly to put on I could see the appeal to system builders, but it is, so that combined with the cost makes it something there's no way I can see recommending for a normal system.

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I think its popularity has died down from when it was way hyped. Experienced builders did not see the “advantages” imo.

other things passed AS5s (AS didnt dry up, afaik) performance years ago. it was my go to until around the mx-4 times...

Dreamerbydesign said:

I think its popularity has died down from when it was way hyped. Experienced builders did not see the “advantages” imo.

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Ya I hadn't really heard a lot about it recently but I had never used it. Decided to try it since LTT sells it meaning there's a reliable store that you know is actually selling what you are ordering and not some random material. Interesting, but won't do it again.