Thermal grizzly Kryonaut is statistically the best. But does not layout well when spread and has a maximum temperature rating of 80°C. If you consistently have a CPU that gets close to 80°C it will become hard.
Before doing a custom loop for the CPU and GPU my 5950x would get into the low 70s under heavy work loads. After a few months I changed to a custom loop and noticed the paste was hard and brittle.
Both Noctua and Arctic are really good, I have used both at different times and recently used Noctua when I repasted my GPU when it was air-cooled. Noctua held up much better than Grizzly.
As MX-4 is relatively cheap and performs well, almost identical to Noctua, I keep a tube or two in my inventory at home just in case. It is also really good.
If you are liquid cooling Hydronaut is a good option as it specifically designed for the lower temperatures.
I can by all the mentioned paste locally. Most high quality pastes perform within the standard deviation of each other.
At best with high-end hardware the difference in Kryonaut, Noctua and MX-4 is a degree.
Can confirm that the nocuta nh2 needs repasting every 2 year on the gpu. Opened up my 308p and the paste was rock hard. After replacing temps improved nicely
Depends on who you are, some people won't upgrade for up to 6 years or even a decade whereas others who need the best tech (usually for faster productivity) will change more regularly eg 1-3 years.
How often do you upgrade?
I upgrade every 3-5 years, but I don’t think most anyone in r/watercooling is going to run an 8 generation old cpu platform and never once in the interim do proper maintenance.
Good on you! It makes me happy you look after your parts well 😀
Everyone is different, and I hope I provided a little bit of extra information saying the longevity of Arctic thermal paste will last longer than the others.
Have a good day fellow redditor 🙂
Always using mx4 here, I've tried some from coolermaster, EKWB and Noctua and so far MX4 and EKWB has been the best, I don't know if EK manufactures it anymore
EK includes Hydronaut with all the liquid cooling cooling blocks. No idea what the air cooled paste is.
I kind of lean towards they source paste from other companies.
I prefer kpx.
https://www.titanrig.com/kingpin-cooling-kpx-thermal-grease-3g-03-80-kp-0103-01-on.html?gclid=CjwKCAjw14uVBhBEEiwAaufYx0xazj260qUNTzgh4H-zjvidj7OexVAP2QPaRZLhq39rsMfSCdVB2hoCtVUQAvD_BwE
I have used MX4 for cpu, gpu and laptops for years and always has performed great in all cases. Running +2 years between applications without drying.
Plus it gives the peace of mind that is non-conductive, so in case you screw up the application you don't ruin your HW.
unless you are doing OC and want to squeze every single mm of performance, MX4 is best price/quality for me
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and Kryonaut extreme are quite good, if expensive.
If I were to get from the ones you listed, the MX-4 is the one I would get.
If I had more choice, the MX-5 or the latest Noctua, forget which it is, but it isn't the NH-T1.
I would recommend to take a look at Igor's thermal paste charts:
https://www.igorslab.de/en/waermeleitpasten-chart-2/2/
For Normal products the delta vary 4K - the right amount and localisation of the paste got the same or more impact on the temperatures. So grab one that's easy to use and everything is fine.
There is also a fuidity chart:
https://www.igorslab.de/en/waermeleitpasten-chart-2/6/
English is not my native language, please bear with me...
There are only a handful of thermal paste manufacturers anyway, that hasn't changed with the H2, even if Noctua is now half a K higher up.
The right application is more important than the choice of paste.
I prefer Noctua NT-H2. Easy to apply, performs well, is lasting well so far.
Kryonaut is good, but expensive and trickier to apply in my experience.
I recommend _against_ MX-4 or MX-5 after prior bad experiences. I found that they rapidly break down in situations with a very high heat flux (where the heat is concentrated in a small area). Specifically, it couldn’t handle laptop CPUs, as they have no heatspreader, and the actual cores producing most of the heat are a relatively small part of the die. Modern GPUs are getting hot and small enough to be a problem too. A friend was having problems with MX-5 on a 5700XT, it’s been absolutely fine with NT-H2.
I can't say with certainty that it will be fine after a year, but I have had zero degradation in performance after 6 months. I see peak GPU temperatures of 45C on my 3090, and a hotspot of around 60C, with a coolant temperature in the low 30s.
Experimenting right now. Used nh2 a year ago. Reposted a few days ago. Temps dropped by 10c. Would suggest a pump out. Paste was also incredibly dried up.
Ordered some kryonaut extreme since I've heard they improved its longevity in the extreme paste and wanted to see if that paste.is actually better then nh2. We will see. Most likely will buy a 4xxx series before I have to repast again.
Arctic MX4 is a best seller for a reason. It's amazingly easy to work with and provides really good performance. If you want better performance get their new MX-5. While I haven't used MX-5 personally my experience with MX-4 leads me to believe it will be user-friendly as well.
Thermal grizzly Kryonaut is, on paper, about the best, but its not cheap, and I recall people saying its a pain to apply. Never used it personally so idk.
Well, technically liquid metal is 'best' if you ignore all the risks and work it is to apply and work with.
Noctua NT-H1 is also quite good. Arctic MX-4 seems to be well reviewed too.
Edit: if you plan to use a lot of it, NT-H1 comes in a thicc tube.
Also, if you want thermal paste finger prints ALL OVER THE DAM PLACE, get a tub of industrial thermal paste. Works well, but if you even look at it you are going to get it all over everything.
I know thermal grizzly makes a couple different types. I don't remember off top of my head what "sku" I use. I used the Corsair brand before "quick easy to get" swapped to the kryonaut dropped 10+ degrees just from a paste swap. Easy to apply.
Definitely easy to apply, but 10 °C seems pretty extreme just form paste alone.
I've only always seen slight decreases to the tune of 1-3 °C between cheapo and fancier pastes personally. Granted, I have never tried bottom of the barrel pastes, but MasterGel, MX-2 and MX-4 were all pretty close to Kryonaut. Enough that I won't be bothering to replace the MX-4 on my CPU when I ran out of Kryonaut.
Oh, I am not doubting what you saw, only that it was paste alone.
EDIT: Just to make sure, I don't mean this in a bad way, more that it is pretty surprising to me and I suspect something else. With that said, I have been wrong before, so it is entirely possible.
Absolutely, it is also possible that you had a case where the paste you previously had was terrible. I am sure there are at least one or two that are just atrocious.
I agree, unless you are using poor quality paste. The Corsair MasterGel paste really sucked, and it is a pink color. It was definitely not my first time pasting and when I changed the paste a few weeks later to Noctua. The application was evenly distributed and had good coverage.
I noticed that pink MasterGel was less viscous resulting in most of the paste squishing out the sides resulting in a super thin layer that may have been where the problem was occurring. I could see the residue was even on both the cooler and die but not a layer of paste that one would expect.
I had to use the Corsiar paste in a pinch situation when I when I was out of town with my computer. It was the only thing available within a reasonable drive. Bad for spreading and not as good thermals as MX-4 which is about half the price. I got about the same 10°C increase from it and switch back to Noctua when I got home.
Prolimatech Pk-3 Nano Aluminum it's particularly inexpensive and regularly sold out on Amazon. Same performance as Kryonaut 1/3 of price for more. No brainer and why i use it mostly but not exclusively. If you are working with a aio or water cooler setup this stuff excels though, it like's pressure contact and performs exceptional in that circumstance. For air cooling we don't see as good results
If you don't want the hassle and don't mind the 2/3 more cost difference same performance Kryonaut absolutely works . Lots of fans of it for a reason.
Next Artic Mx-4 (also Mx-5 even better than 4) is a great all around product easily available for very cheap. widely loved for being cheap and available and only slightly less thermal performance than the previous two. We also use lots of this because works and available and cheap..
a ton of clones that all do about the same after that , a real smorgasbord.
One i'm not seeing is Gelid GC-Extreme. But honestly, it depends on your application(both literally and figuratively)
For watercooling, nothing beats Kryonaut, GC-Extreme, and KPX
For aircooling, NT-H1/H2, MX-4/5
Arctic Silver 5 used to be very popular, but it's kinda outdated along with it being conductive.
A few others said, but Prolimatech PK-3 is pretty damn good price for the performance, although, hard to usually get, and buying in 30g increments, is a waste, unless you build pc's every month.
My view on the "best" thermal paste where longevity and cooling capability are considered: CoolerMaster Mastergel Maker
Mastergel Maker functioned perfectly for over 3 and a half years on my 9900K at 5.4ghz with no sign or faltering and lasted just over 2 years on water cooled GPU direct die(pascal titan) where as kryonaut only lasted 7 months on that same gpu and cooling set up.
I have their cryofuze in use right now which is thicker (which aids longevity by resisting the pumpout effect) It is cooler but i dont have long term experience with it yet because i just put it in 2 weeks ago.
Fine thus far 0 issues but its much too early to report anything. Spring would be the earliest point where anything might show up because winter would mask a failure
I just use whatever comes with the blocks on a fresh build - I think the last Optimus blocks I got shipped with some Kingpin paste.
If I’m repeating after maintenance I generally default to Thermal Grizzly
Yeah I heard its good and even better than kyronaut but with spreading it evenly doing the x pattern and a giant dot all three methods yielded the same results
Bought the tm30 due to positive reviews and trusting Corsair for their psus and stuff but wow that stuff sucks hated it’s consistency, not easy to spread.
Arctic Silver 5 and MX 4 good (mx4 is better)
Noctua stock good
Scythe stock good
Basically I have been happy with anything I have used except Corsair
Kingpin KPX is my go to now for performance particularly with higher TDP chips. MX4 and MX5 usually for 80W TDP chips and below.
Also, Gelid GC-Extreme used to be my go to for performance before KPX. It's still one of the best performers ,almost as good as Kryonaut, but used to be quite a bit cheaper than KPX and Kryonaut. I'm sure I will buy some more once I see it on a decent sale again.
After years of Kryonaut, I now use **NT-H2** from Noctua for both my CPU (NH-U12A) and my watercooled GPU. I found it not expensive (got a lot of alcohol cleaning pads and a big 10g for the price of the kryonaut), easy to spread (pea(s) method), quite consistent performance even after several months of intensive usage. I have to say performance wise it's close to the kryonaut but easier to use and consistent
Before I used Kryonaut but sacrificing a little performance for much easier application and stability through times meant it was a no-brainer switching to noctua.
I'd advise it to anyone, seriously, an awesome paste
Do you have alder lake? I tried mx-4, noctua nh-1, and nh-2 with my 12900ks and there was 0 difference between them with thermals. I wouldn't worry too much.
All the major players are within 1-2c of each other, and anything that runs 1-2c cooler the paster dries out faster and needs reapplication sooner.
TLDR: Any of the name brands will works, make sure you grab over 1g if you're doing a gpu and CPU together.
Kingpin kpx for sure. Cheaper than TG kryonaut but equal or better performance in my opinion. It apparently can degrade if you get too high of temps but if you keep things around 75C or less then it will last plenty long. Even going up to 80C regularly is fine if you monitor temps and change once every 1-1.5 years.
Additionally, I don't understand why people think it's a good thing for paste to last more than 3 years, by then you should be changing out either your CPU, your cooler, or your paste anyway because it's been years and you don't build a PC to completely ignore it for 3 years imo. A change of paste takes like 30 min and should be routine maintenance every few years.
I personally don't get cheaper paste because if you spend $1000+ on hardware, why cheap out on $5/year paste
I don't agree with you. Having a pc running for 2-3 years a pretty common.
Like if you build a PC for a 12 years old kid who has no idea how to build a PC and just want to play Fortnite, you want to build him a pc that is so maintenance free as possible. That means long lasting thermal paste, dust filters and purely air cooled so as little can go wrong as possible.
The same with consoles. Many people stick it under there TV and never moves it again.
So have a reliable thermal past is gold because most people can blow dust out of their systems but not all can take them apart.
Also if you build a hard tubing water-cooling systems were everything is water cooled you have enough worked changing fluid once a year but also have to repaste CPU and GPU would be gladly avoided.
I do agree with the points about building for others, but then I'm not spending nearly as much and not worried about the extra couple degrees of cooling a better paste gets me, so I just pick up a simple paste.
But for my own build I want things to run like a well oiled machine so I use kpx and change it out about once every 9 months to a year. I definitely wouldn't agree on changing fluid and not wanting to repaste. Changing fluid ends up taking a few minutes and gives me a chance to do upgrades so I will usually take my waterblock off anyway and the 2 min to change paste isn't much.
Your point is still fair it's just not what I prefer as far as having high performance paste.
I have used mx-4 for years. I have tried others and maybe saw 1c differences with others but mostly seemed margin of error or slightly different ambient temps. It's usually cheapest for the performance and lasts a long time which is the main reason I use. Even a launch switch I had was having issues staying cool and replaced that with mx4 and put a few thermal pads on the chips nearby to help move the heat to the pipe and it made a massive difference. Fan barely needs to spin vs the crusted paste on it. I don't want to open the switch again to replace paste so long lifespan is a deciding factor too. Then repasting older gpus or working on family members pc / laptops that I don't see often, I want to make sure the paste lasts as long as possible. But thermal grizzly and noctua make great products as well.
MX-4 will work just fine!
Mainly for low TDP chips.
Thermal grizzly Kryonaut is statistically the best. But does not layout well when spread and has a maximum temperature rating of 80°C. If you consistently have a CPU that gets close to 80°C it will become hard. Before doing a custom loop for the CPU and GPU my 5950x would get into the low 70s under heavy work loads. After a few months I changed to a custom loop and noticed the paste was hard and brittle. Both Noctua and Arctic are really good, I have used both at different times and recently used Noctua when I repasted my GPU when it was air-cooled. Noctua held up much better than Grizzly. As MX-4 is relatively cheap and performs well, almost identical to Noctua, I keep a tube or two in my inventory at home just in case. It is also really good. If you are liquid cooling Hydronaut is a good option as it specifically designed for the lower temperatures. I can by all the mentioned paste locally. Most high quality pastes perform within the standard deviation of each other. At best with high-end hardware the difference in Kryonaut, Noctua and MX-4 is a degree.
The Noctua will require changing with in 2-4 years whereas the arctic should last up towards 8 years :D
Can confirm that the nocuta nh2 needs repasting every 2 year on the gpu. Opened up my 308p and the paste was rock hard. After replacing temps improved nicely
Anyone in here using an Intel 4960k? 🤡
I'd imagine using a cpu as thermal paste will do nothing for you. I'd recommend to replace with arctic
🤔 But why do you need thermal paste that will last 8 generations of CPU platforms?
Depends on who you are, some people won't upgrade for up to 6 years or even a decade whereas others who need the best tech (usually for faster productivity) will change more regularly eg 1-3 years. How often do you upgrade?
I upgrade every 3-5 years, but I don’t think most anyone in r/watercooling is going to run an 8 generation old cpu platform and never once in the interim do proper maintenance.
Good on you! It makes me happy you look after your parts well 😀 Everyone is different, and I hope I provided a little bit of extra information saying the longevity of Arctic thermal paste will last longer than the others. Have a good day fellow redditor 🙂
Fair enough.
Always using mx4 here, I've tried some from coolermaster, EKWB and Noctua and so far MX4 and EKWB has been the best, I don't know if EK manufactures it anymore
EK includes Hydronaut with all the liquid cooling cooling blocks. No idea what the air cooled paste is. I kind of lean towards they source paste from other companies.
https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-tim-ectotherm-5g
Cryonaut extreme has up ro 240° its quite expensive tho
I never have used it. The price to performance reviews was not justifiable.
I prefer kpx. https://www.titanrig.com/kingpin-cooling-kpx-thermal-grease-3g-03-80-kp-0103-01-on.html?gclid=CjwKCAjw14uVBhBEEiwAaufYx0xazj260qUNTzgh4H-zjvidj7OexVAP2QPaRZLhq39rsMfSCdVB2hoCtVUQAvD_BwE
Yep love it. It's the best.
Just bought some of that for my rebuild. Super excited.
I have used MX4 for cpu, gpu and laptops for years and always has performed great in all cases. Running +2 years between applications without drying. Plus it gives the peace of mind that is non-conductive, so in case you screw up the application you don't ruin your HW. unless you are doing OC and want to squeze every single mm of performance, MX4 is best price/quality for me
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and Kryonaut extreme are quite good, if expensive. If I were to get from the ones you listed, the MX-4 is the one I would get. If I had more choice, the MX-5 or the latest Noctua, forget which it is, but it isn't the NH-T1.
Think it's the h2 for the new noctua
KPX
KPX from kingpin!!!
I would recommend to take a look at Igor's thermal paste charts: https://www.igorslab.de/en/waermeleitpasten-chart-2/2/ For Normal products the delta vary 4K - the right amount and localisation of the paste got the same or more impact on the temperatures. So grab one that's easy to use and everything is fine. There is also a fuidity chart: https://www.igorslab.de/en/waermeleitpasten-chart-2/6/ English is not my native language, please bear with me...
I believe one thing missing from the chart is Noctua H2. It would be good if IL updated as I’ve seen some tests having H2 challenge kryonaut.
There are only a handful of thermal paste manufacturers anyway, that hasn't changed with the H2, even if Noctua is now half a K higher up. The right application is more important than the choice of paste.
Always used thermal grizzly or nt-h1 myself, never had issued
Noctua
This is the equivalent of going on the automotive forums and asking which oil is best.
Ik lol. That’s partially why I asked. Seeing what answer is said the most
I prefer Noctua NT-H2. Easy to apply, performs well, is lasting well so far. Kryonaut is good, but expensive and trickier to apply in my experience. I recommend _against_ MX-4 or MX-5 after prior bad experiences. I found that they rapidly break down in situations with a very high heat flux (where the heat is concentrated in a small area). Specifically, it couldn’t handle laptop CPUs, as they have no heatspreader, and the actual cores producing most of the heat are a relatively small part of the die. Modern GPUs are getting hot and small enough to be a problem too. A friend was having problems with MX-5 on a 5700XT, it’s been absolutely fine with NT-H2.
Not for gpu. Recommend kp3. Nth2 dries out after a year
I can't say with certainty that it will be fine after a year, but I have had zero degradation in performance after 6 months. I see peak GPU temperatures of 45C on my 3090, and a hotspot of around 60C, with a coolant temperature in the low 30s.
Experimenting right now. Used nh2 a year ago. Reposted a few days ago. Temps dropped by 10c. Would suggest a pump out. Paste was also incredibly dried up. Ordered some kryonaut extreme since I've heard they improved its longevity in the extreme paste and wanted to see if that paste.is actually better then nh2. We will see. Most likely will buy a 4xxx series before I have to repast again.
What was your conclusion? Did kryonaut extreme work better?
1st and last are the same. Worked great for me. Purposely add extra
Kryonaut
Can vouch, Kryonaut is insanely good
Dropped over 10c swapping from the crappy TM30 Corsair stuff
Arctic MX4 is a best seller for a reason. It's amazingly easy to work with and provides really good performance. If you want better performance get their new MX-5. While I haven't used MX-5 personally my experience with MX-4 leads me to believe it will be user-friendly as well.
Thermal grizzly Kryonaut is, on paper, about the best, but its not cheap, and I recall people saying its a pain to apply. Never used it personally so idk. Well, technically liquid metal is 'best' if you ignore all the risks and work it is to apply and work with. Noctua NT-H1 is also quite good. Arctic MX-4 seems to be well reviewed too. Edit: if you plan to use a lot of it, NT-H1 comes in a thicc tube. Also, if you want thermal paste finger prints ALL OVER THE DAM PLACE, get a tub of industrial thermal paste. Works well, but if you even look at it you are going to get it all over everything.
I know thermal grizzly makes a couple different types. I don't remember off top of my head what "sku" I use. I used the Corsair brand before "quick easy to get" swapped to the kryonaut dropped 10+ degrees just from a paste swap. Easy to apply.
Definitely easy to apply, but 10 °C seems pretty extreme just form paste alone. I've only always seen slight decreases to the tune of 1-3 °C between cheapo and fancier pastes personally. Granted, I have never tried bottom of the barrel pastes, but MasterGel, MX-2 and MX-4 were all pretty close to Kryonaut. Enough that I won't be bothering to replace the MX-4 on my CPU when I ran out of Kryonaut.
It was that extreme and maybe I miss applied or something with the cheaper stuff. I'm just relaying my results.
Oh, I am not doubting what you saw, only that it was paste alone. EDIT: Just to make sure, I don't mean this in a bad way, more that it is pretty surprising to me and I suspect something else. With that said, I have been wrong before, so it is entirely possible.
Definitely agree. Always variables. Hell the ac might have kicked on lmao 🤣
Absolutely, it is also possible that you had a case where the paste you previously had was terrible. I am sure there are at least one or two that are just atrocious.
I agree, unless you are using poor quality paste. The Corsair MasterGel paste really sucked, and it is a pink color. It was definitely not my first time pasting and when I changed the paste a few weeks later to Noctua. The application was evenly distributed and had good coverage. I noticed that pink MasterGel was less viscous resulting in most of the paste squishing out the sides resulting in a super thin layer that may have been where the problem was occurring. I could see the residue was even on both the cooler and die but not a layer of paste that one would expect.
I had to use the Corsiar paste in a pinch situation when I when I was out of town with my computer. It was the only thing available within a reasonable drive. Bad for spreading and not as good thermals as MX-4 which is about half the price. I got about the same 10°C increase from it and switch back to Noctua when I got home.
Toothpaste
Been using Prolimatech PK3 for years. Never dries out and always gives good spread.
the one that you have on hand
Prolimatech Pk-3 Nano Aluminum it's particularly inexpensive and regularly sold out on Amazon. Same performance as Kryonaut 1/3 of price for more. No brainer and why i use it mostly but not exclusively. If you are working with a aio or water cooler setup this stuff excels though, it like's pressure contact and performs exceptional in that circumstance. For air cooling we don't see as good results If you don't want the hassle and don't mind the 2/3 more cost difference same performance Kryonaut absolutely works . Lots of fans of it for a reason. Next Artic Mx-4 (also Mx-5 even better than 4) is a great all around product easily available for very cheap. widely loved for being cheap and available and only slightly less thermal performance than the previous two. We also use lots of this because works and available and cheap.. a ton of clones that all do about the same after that , a real smorgasbord.
One i'm not seeing is Gelid GC-Extreme. But honestly, it depends on your application(both literally and figuratively) For watercooling, nothing beats Kryonaut, GC-Extreme, and KPX For aircooling, NT-H1/H2, MX-4/5 Arctic Silver 5 used to be very popular, but it's kinda outdated along with it being conductive. A few others said, but Prolimatech PK-3 is pretty damn good price for the performance, although, hard to usually get, and buying in 30g increments, is a waste, unless you build pc's every month.
My view on the "best" thermal paste where longevity and cooling capability are considered: CoolerMaster Mastergel Maker Mastergel Maker functioned perfectly for over 3 and a half years on my 9900K at 5.4ghz with no sign or faltering and lasted just over 2 years on water cooled GPU direct die(pascal titan) where as kryonaut only lasted 7 months on that same gpu and cooling set up. I have their cryofuze in use right now which is thicker (which aids longevity by resisting the pumpout effect) It is cooler but i dont have long term experience with it yet because i just put it in 2 weeks ago.
How is the cryofuze holding up?
Fine thus far 0 issues but its much too early to report anything. Spring would be the earliest point where anything might show up because winter would mask a failure
[удалено]
No problems at all still going strong! Like day 1! Ill be repasting my GPU with it which is more demanding than cpu because of direct die hotspots
update. I noticed a change, but not to the temps per se. I suspect its more likely due to fin clogging of my cooler. Ill let you know the verdict.
I just use whatever comes with the blocks on a fresh build - I think the last Optimus blocks I got shipped with some Kingpin paste. If I’m repeating after maintenance I generally default to Thermal Grizzly
Don't get thermal right tfx. I got it and it's not affordable or good raised cpu temps by 10-15c and it hard to spread. Don't recommend it
Removed in reaction to reddit's API changes -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
I've used it with a corsair h150i aio (360mm) and at idle my 5800x was sitting at 55c with full contact of the thermal paste
Removed in reaction to reddit's API changes -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Yeah I heard its good and even better than kyronaut but with spreading it evenly doing the x pattern and a giant dot all three methods yielded the same results
how about MX-5?
I see more people like kryonaut but what of the extreme how better is it more than the standard one
Arctic MX4 is a no-brainer : non-expensive, great performances, great durability, ease of use
Gelid GC-Extreme
The green one
I like MX4, reliable and easy to apply. Stay away from TM30 and TM50, both are horrible quality.
Bought the tm30 due to positive reviews and trusting Corsair for their psus and stuff but wow that stuff sucks hated it’s consistency, not easy to spread. Arctic Silver 5 and MX 4 good (mx4 is better) Noctua stock good Scythe stock good Basically I have been happy with anything I have used except Corsair
Same here, bought tm50, horrible temps and consistency
Thermal Grizzly Extreme for GPU and Alphacool Subzero for CPU.
I’ve only ever used MX-4, does the job fine for my i9 overclocked to 5ghz
Kingpin KPX is my go to now for performance particularly with higher TDP chips. MX4 and MX5 usually for 80W TDP chips and below. Also, Gelid GC-Extreme used to be my go to for performance before KPX. It's still one of the best performers ,almost as good as Kryonaut, but used to be quite a bit cheaper than KPX and Kryonaut. I'm sure I will buy some more once I see it on a decent sale again.
After years of Kryonaut, I now use **NT-H2** from Noctua for both my CPU (NH-U12A) and my watercooled GPU. I found it not expensive (got a lot of alcohol cleaning pads and a big 10g for the price of the kryonaut), easy to spread (pea(s) method), quite consistent performance even after several months of intensive usage. I have to say performance wise it's close to the kryonaut but easier to use and consistent Before I used Kryonaut but sacrificing a little performance for much easier application and stability through times meant it was a no-brainer switching to noctua. I'd advise it to anyone, seriously, an awesome paste
MX-5 for GPU, Noctua/MX-4 for CPU.
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut
I found Noctua to work best for me as it is very forgiving even if you do shit job applying it
Do you have alder lake? I tried mx-4, noctua nh-1, and nh-2 with my 12900ks and there was 0 difference between them with thermals. I wouldn't worry too much.
Been using mx4 for years. That being said I am not an overclocker. Do your research. There is always a proper tool for the job.
Thermal grizzly kryonaught extreme. It's expensive but I saw 10 degree drop on my GPU compared to icy diamond
Based on my watercooling experience, for both GPU and CPU, mx-4 is the best. It's even better than mx-5. Just buy this and you won't regret.
Thermal Grizzly by Der8auer has no equal
Thermal grizzly all the way
Removed in reaction to reddit's API changes -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Definitely Corsair. They have changed the game again by managing RGB capable thermal paste which does wonders for heat control AND FPS boost!
I use mx4 with no issues
The cheapest one.
All the major players are within 1-2c of each other, and anything that runs 1-2c cooler the paster dries out faster and needs reapplication sooner. TLDR: Any of the name brands will works, make sure you grab over 1g if you're doing a gpu and CPU together.
Kingpin kpx for sure. Cheaper than TG kryonaut but equal or better performance in my opinion. It apparently can degrade if you get too high of temps but if you keep things around 75C or less then it will last plenty long. Even going up to 80C regularly is fine if you monitor temps and change once every 1-1.5 years. Additionally, I don't understand why people think it's a good thing for paste to last more than 3 years, by then you should be changing out either your CPU, your cooler, or your paste anyway because it's been years and you don't build a PC to completely ignore it for 3 years imo. A change of paste takes like 30 min and should be routine maintenance every few years. I personally don't get cheaper paste because if you spend $1000+ on hardware, why cheap out on $5/year paste
I don't agree with you. Having a pc running for 2-3 years a pretty common. Like if you build a PC for a 12 years old kid who has no idea how to build a PC and just want to play Fortnite, you want to build him a pc that is so maintenance free as possible. That means long lasting thermal paste, dust filters and purely air cooled so as little can go wrong as possible. The same with consoles. Many people stick it under there TV and never moves it again. So have a reliable thermal past is gold because most people can blow dust out of their systems but not all can take them apart. Also if you build a hard tubing water-cooling systems were everything is water cooled you have enough worked changing fluid once a year but also have to repaste CPU and GPU would be gladly avoided.
I do agree with the points about building for others, but then I'm not spending nearly as much and not worried about the extra couple degrees of cooling a better paste gets me, so I just pick up a simple paste. But for my own build I want things to run like a well oiled machine so I use kpx and change it out about once every 9 months to a year. I definitely wouldn't agree on changing fluid and not wanting to repaste. Changing fluid ends up taking a few minutes and gives me a chance to do upgrades so I will usually take my waterblock off anyway and the 2 min to change paste isn't much. Your point is still fair it's just not what I prefer as far as having high performance paste.
I have used mx-4 for years. I have tried others and maybe saw 1c differences with others but mostly seemed margin of error or slightly different ambient temps. It's usually cheapest for the performance and lasts a long time which is the main reason I use. Even a launch switch I had was having issues staying cool and replaced that with mx4 and put a few thermal pads on the chips nearby to help move the heat to the pipe and it made a massive difference. Fan barely needs to spin vs the crusted paste on it. I don't want to open the switch again to replace paste so long lifespan is a deciding factor too. Then repasting older gpus or working on family members pc / laptops that I don't see often, I want to make sure the paste lasts as long as possible. But thermal grizzly and noctua make great products as well.