best thermal compound

[KEHVKU.S]

Hello
you would need a good suggestion on which thermal compound to use and whether there is anything good you recommend.
and when should it be replaced?

cpu is i9 9900k

cooler Thermaltake Vesijahutus Floe Riing RGB 360 TT Premium

[Oshino Shinobu]

The best in terms of thermal performance are really the liquid metal compounds, but I wouldn't really advise using them for regular builds. 

 

Something like Arctic MX-4 or Noctua NH-T1 will serve you well.

[Vejnemojnen]

I would suggest Arctic MX-4, bc it's dirt cheap, one 8g tube is ~10USD or so

[RejZoR]

Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut or CoolerMaster Maker Nano. I've had Conductonaut and it's an absolute pain in the rear. It horribly stained my CPU IHS, my graphic card copper plate and results were not as impressive as I was expecting.

[aisle9]

MX-4 and NT-H1 are probably the ones I've used most. AS5 is fine as well, but it's mildly capacitive and takes a while to burn in and start really doing its thing. When I was flipping builds, I practically ate the Banggood and Thermocoolflux tubes from China. Never had issues with them, but I never got any on the board.

 

As long as it's not a $2 peanut butter jar from China, you're probably ok. Just make sure it's not going to short your board if you drop some on it.

[jiyeon]

Best I have personally used is Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. It versus something like Arctic MX-4 in my experience with my 4.9GHz 8600K is around a 4-6°C difference, so not an awful lot, but if every degree matters to you, it's probably your best bet. It doesn't cure as well which means it will practically never need replacing. It is painfully expensive though.

[LukeSavenije]

Tomshardware actually took a lot of popular pastes in testing a couple years ago. the article itself isn't the newest anymore, but still very relevant

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermal-paste-comparison,5108-8.html

 

but yes, this does show the earlier recommended Kryonaut coming out on top with normal pastes, but this way you can make your own considerations

[freeagent]

If you are looking for something that is excellent, I would recommend Thermalright TF8. Good stuff. TF8 is rated at 13.8w/mk. I use it on my CPUs and GPUs. I also have it on my moms dell laptop. They also have a line called TFX, and its rated at 14.3w/mk. I haven't tried it because I still have a lot of TF8, and I am cheap, and I have big fans and I know how to use them.

[StarsMars]

I’ve used kingpin KPx on my cpu and gpu. Dropped a fee degrees from the Noctua stuff I had before