Looking for thermal paste with long-term application longevity

[takk]

Hello! I've been researching a lot about thermal pastes, and I'm particularly looking for one that I can apply and forget about it, for at least 2 years, without losing too much efficiency. It really doesn't matter if it performs a bit worse than cheaper ones. I'm not an overclocker so I'm ok with exchanging 2-3c for longevity.

 

I've heard only Arctic Silver 5 manages to last that long. Arctic MX-4 claims it lasts 8 years, but I've read reviews of it degrading after only 6-8 months, with a big increase in temperature. It might be because most people buy it from China, and I've read many reviews saying most of the MX-4 from China are fake.

Is there any other brand out there that I could check out?

 

I don't mind if it has a higher price, as long at I don't need to worry about reapplying for a while.

[The_russian]

Most quality thermal pastes should last at least 2 years, just don’t go with a cheap Chinese knockoff. If you are really concerned about longevity and don’t mind the slight decrease in thermal performance, it could be worth it to look into thermal pads instead of thermal paste.

[Guest]

MX-4

ahem edit (yea don't buy from china)

[Samfisher]

Most good ones last way more than 2 years.  Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut/Hydronaut is pretty good.  They are non-curing and non-conductive and are at the top of the charts in terms of thermal performance too.

[LIGISTX]

11 minutes ago, takk said:

Hello! I've been researching a lot about thermal pastes, and I'm particularly looking for one that I can apply and forget about it, for at least 2 years, without losing too much efficiency. It really doesn't matter if it performs a bit worse than cheaper ones. I'm not an overclocker so I'm ok with exchanging 2-3c for longevity.

 

I've heard only Arctic Silver 5 manages to last that long. Arctic MX-4 claims it lasts 8 years, but I've read reviews of it degrading after only 6-8 months, with a big increase in temperature. It might be because most people buy it from China, and I've read many reviews saying most of the MX-4 from China are fake.

Is there any other brand out there that I could check out?

 

I don't mind if it has a higher price, as long at I don't need to worry about reapplying for a while.

I have used Arctic silver 5 for most of my PC using years, now I use kryonaut as its "a little better". Realistically, any paste will be fine for a very, very long time. 2 years is nothing to even consider worrying about. Most PC's I have built (over 20) have never had the CPU heatsink taken back off, some are 10+ years old and working fine.

[Bombastinator]

Something non drying and not liquid metal would be my basic take.

 

I like the diamond powder filled paste I bought some years ago.  Might be ICdiamond but I’m not sure. Had extremely small industrial diamonds in it.  It’s non drying but has good conductivity.  Been holding for 5 years so far.  I recently wiggled my cooler a bit and it’s still moving and working good.

[Guest]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

I like the diamond powder filled paste I bought some years ago.  Might be ICdiamond but I’m not sure. Had extremely small industrial diamonds in it.  It’s non drying but has good conductivity.  Been holding for 5 years so far.  I recently wiggled my cooler a bit and it’s still moving and working good.

I'm using IC diamond on naked cores.

Prefer Antec Formula 7

 

The IC Diamond spreads horribly. It's very thick. Needs some burn in time as well. Not good for chilling if a burn in isn't done first. But, good thermals. 

 

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, ShrimpBrime said:

I'm using IC diamond on naked cores.

Prefer Antec Formula 7

 

The IC Diamond spreads horribly. It's very thick. Needs some burn in time as well. Not good for chilling if a burn in isn't done first. But, good thermals. 

 

I definitely did not use ICdiamond then.  The stuff I used was not thick.

[Guest]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

I definitely did not use ICdiamond then.  The stuff I used was not thick.

I don't know the age of my tubes. They could have gotten thick through time. Had 3 of them. Only got a shot left.

 

The Antec Formula 7 is really easy to spread. And I think it actually works better than the IC diamond. However, these are the only 2 diamond pastes I've tried asside from Antec Formula 6 which has almost the same conductivity as the 7. I used this for at least 12 years over, say... 50-75 different cpus at least. A few GPUs as well.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

I don't know the age of my tubes. They could have gotten thick through time. Had 3 of them. Only got a shot left.

 

The Antec Formula 7 is really easy to spread. And I think it actually works better than the IC diamond. However, these are the only 2 diamond pastes I've tried asside from Antec Formula 6 which has almost the same conductivity as the 7. I used this for at least 12 years over, say... 50-75 different cpus at least. A few GPUs as well.

Antec formula 7 is also a diamond filled paste? What I mostly remember shopping was at the time one could pick the size of the diamonds and their percentage of content.  I looked for the smallest ones with the highest percentage content I could find.  The stuff was not especially cheap iirc.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Antec formula 7 is also a diamond filled paste?

Yep, that's a diamond nano paste. 

The only issue with diamond pastes, when you wipe the paste off the IHS plate, it removes the laser etching from the IHS plate. It's like a super fine grit sand paper lol. That's why a lot of people don't like it.

 

But, diamond is the best thermal conductor on the planet. Why would you not use it?

[Mister Woof]

I'm using whatever Cryorig included in their cooler and it's going in three years now with no problems.

 

I think people mess with them more often than the really need to.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Mister Woof said:

I'm using whatever Cryorig included in their cooler and it's going in three years now with no problems.

 

I think people mess with them more often than the really need to.

Some pastes need to be messed with regularly.  Like liquid metal.  Only one reason I won’t use it.  I’d rather have a pure indium sheet and put up with ultra scary pressure requirements.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

I'm using whatever Cryorig included in their cooler and it's going in three years now with no problems.

 

I think people mess with them more often than the really need to.

Probably one of the CP series of pastes from the looks of it.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Some pastes need to be messed with regularly.  Like liquid metal.  Only one reason I won’t use it.  I’d rather have a pure indium sheet and put up with ultra scary pressure requirements.

I have no interest in trying liquid metal.

Watching people de-lid soldered chips, then using LM. 

First the solder is a complete bond and transfers thermals better.

The only reason I ever did a de-lid was to run direct die cooling.

For the most part, up till Zen, had potential to gain 100mhz from drop in temps.

But a re-lid for an Intel chip, like 8700K, LM under the lid is a great replacement. 

[Mister Woof]

12 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Some pastes need to be messed with regularly.  Like liquid metal.  Only one reason I won’t use it.  I’d rather have a pure indium sheet and put up with ultra scary pressure requirements.

Going on three years on my application of conductonaut, too.

[takk]

43 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

I have used Arctic silver 5 for most of my PC using years, now I use kryonaut as its "a little better". Realistically, any paste will be fine for a very, very long time. 2 years is nothing to even consider worrying about. Most PC's I have built (over 20) have never had the CPU heatsink taken back off, some are 10+ years old and working fine.

 

47 minutes ago, The_russian said:

Most quality thermal pastes should last at least 2 years, just don’t go with a cheap Chinese knockoff. If you are really concerned about longevity and don’t mind the slight decrease in thermal performance, it could be worth it to look into thermal pads instead of thermal paste.

 

Thank you! 

Before researching, I bought a very cheap HY810, its not a knock-off, but it is a chinese thermal paste. The reason for it is that all I could find about it was about performance, and it performed well. Also I could throw in my purchase over US$30 to get free shipping and it was pretty cheap. 

I'm with stock thermal paste on a Ryzen 2700X for about a year and a half, getting at most 65c while gaming (even tho it reaches 85c on Aida64). I'm just worried that I might get a better performance with this cheap one for the first couple of months and then start to feel worse after that than what I have right now.

Should be worth to try it or it should degrade pretty best and I should just get a better one?

In that case I'll look into a Kryonaut, Arctic Silver 5 or an original MX-4. Thermal pads looks nice as well, I'll do some research about it!

Thanks a lot again for all the replies! I'll follow the discussion.

[Mister Woof]

It won't magically just die one day because it gets hot. Even if it did overheat, it would throttle and give you some indication of problems. And then at that point you can reexamine your paste or cooler.

 

I would not really worry about it, IMO.

[LIGISTX]

48 minutes ago, takk said:

 

 

Thank you! 

Before researching, I bought a very cheap HY810, its not a knock-off, but it is a chinese thermal paste. The reason for it is that all I could find about it was about performance, and it performed well. Also I could throw in my purchase over US$30 to get free shipping and it was pretty cheap. 

I'm with stock thermal paste on a Ryzen 2700X for about a year and a half, getting at most 65c while gaming (even tho it reaches 85c on Aida64). I'm just worried that I might get a better performance with this cheap one for the first couple of months and then start to feel worse after that than what I have right now.

Should be worth to try it or it should degrade pretty best and I should just get a better one?

In that case I'll look into a Kryonaut, Arctic Silver 5 or an original MX-4. Thermal pads looks nice as well, I'll do some research about it!

Thanks a lot again for all the replies! I'll follow the discussion.

I would just use the stock paste on a stock cooler. They actually use pretty good stuff... Just go with that. AMD expects the CPU to last 10 years no problem, so just let it be

[takk]

2 hours ago, Samfisher said:

Most good ones last way more than 2 years.  Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut/Hydronaut is pretty good.  They are non-curing and non-conductive and are at the top of the charts in terms of thermal performance too.

Thank you a lot! One last question, would you consider the OCX by Gelid 1g a "good one"?

[Samfisher]

2 minutes ago, takk said:

Thank you a lot! One last question, would you consider the OCX by Gelid 1g a "good one"?

Gelid makes pretty good pastes as well, although I don't think they are marketed nearly as well as their competitors.  It's been years and years since I saw that brand on a thermal paste chart, mostly because they're not as popular as they were back then when everyone was replacing their stock GPU coolers for something from Gelid.  Not too sure specifically on the OCX however.

[xg32]

4 minutes ago, takk said:

.

For performance it's kryonaut hands down, for longevity mx4 lasts longer, if you don't wanna repaste at all, get carbonaut, but it's 5-8C hotter than good paste. Those are just the stuff that i've used, along with AS5 (no reason to use it over MX4 now)

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, Mister Woof said:

Going on three years on my application of conductonaut, too.

The problem is liquid metal is indium and gallium. gallium Oxidizes easily and gallium oxide is nasty stuff.   Leaving it on for three years doesn’t mean it hasn’t done damage.  Perhaps your application kept all the oxygen out somehow.  Probably didn’t though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium

[Mister Woof]

5 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The problem is liquid metal is indium and gallium. gallium Oxidizes easily and gallium oxide is nasty stuff.   Leaving it on for three years doesn’t mean it hasn’t done damage.  Perhaps your application kept all the oxygen out somehow.  Probably didn’t though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium

Maybe that will finally be a reason to upgrade from this thing.

 

Performance on new CPUs certainly hasn't.

 

In all seriousness, most of the videos I've seen of long-term LM applications shows some corrosion of the IHS, but the die remains shiny and unchanged.

 

So at worst it means over time a new IHS might be needed if transfer suffers from the corrosion. Otherwise, back to to point 1. Maybe I'll get an upgrade finally.

 

Given all the new CPUs from both manufacturers are soldered now, and likely future iterations will be less successful to overclock, this is mostly a one time deal for me anyway. Very unlikely I'll ever delid anything ever again.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Mister Woof said:

Maybe that will finally be a reason to upgrade from this thing.

 

Performance on new CPUs certainly hasn't.

 

In all seriousness, most of the videos I've seen of long-term LM applications shows some corrosion of the IHS, but the die remains shiny and unchanged.

 

So at worst it means over time a new IHS might be needed if transfer suffers from the corrosion. Otherwise, back to to point 1. Maybe I'll get an upgrade finally.

 

Given all the new CPUs from both manufacturers are soldered now, and likely future iterations will be less successful to overclock, this is mostly a one time deal for me anyway. Very unlikely I'll ever delid anything ever again.

Gallium only corrodes some substances iirc. Silicon apparently isn’t one of them.