Best long term thermal paste.

[Wh0_Am_1]

Hello everyone, it's time that I repaste my laptop, and I don't exactly want to do it for at least a few years, but it's thermal throttling now, so I need a solution. At the moment I am looking at Kryonaut, but honestly I can't find any good long term tests for thermal pastes. So, I come for opinions and second opinions. Because I only have 5-8C of thermal headroom in best case scenario that stand between me being able to run my RTX 2060 at 1000 to 1500Mhz and it throttling down hard to 300Mhz so I need something that can perform and will continue to perform.

[Levent]

With that little headroom, I don't think there is anything good enough. My temperatures rose around 15c on my passively cooled laptop after two years. It has no fans or temperatures ever got above 70c. Your only bet might be liquid metal.

 

[Quackers101]

dont use a paste

well, if you want to try, it can be a solution tho.

Like thermal pads, like thermal grizzly I think it was (not the blue sticky ones).

Would be cool if there is more development around such pads/sheets.

 

Liquid metal has it's downsides, but might be what you want. But a lot of caution and might not be recommended to using it wildly.

[tkitch]

very few things will last "years" under the torture tests of PC Thermals.

 

If you're running that close to the edge?  Get used to the idea of repasting every year or two.

[Tech87]

TG Kryonaut is the best paste you can get as far as I know.

If you have an Intel cpu, you can undervolt it, which should not only lower the cpu teams by a fair bit, but should mean less heat generated in the laptop compartment as well. May help the GPU a little. Not sure.

 

You could also get yourself a laptop cooling pad, which has fans attached.

 

Those solutions all combined together may be enough.

[tkitch]

And as far as "Long term results" ?  Not many people are going to put in the effort when products on consumer PCs have a 2-4 year lifespan, generally.

[narrdarr]

you'll probably lose a couple degree, but if you want a long term solution. you can use a carbon pad like grizzly thermal carbonaut. 

[Beerzerker]

26 minutes ago, narrdarr said:

you'll probably lose a couple degree, but if you want a long term solution. you can use a carbon pad like grizzly thermal carbonaut. 

This is probrably the best you'll do for any long term use, esp with a lappy.
Liquid metal is not a good idea for long term use since it has some bad side effects that appears in like 2 to 3 years and you can't really fix the damage.
Repasting doesn't help either, what's done is done related to that.

If you can't get a pad then it's really a matter of doing some homework and although folks love Kryonaut, just know it's a paste/TIM that was originally made and formulated for extreme sub-zero use. 
Because of that it carries a high price tag per gram without enough increase in thermal performance to justify this additional expense for daily use vs what else you can get.
MX4 Carbon is a great TIM and I've used it for awhile now, no problems or need to reapply since I've been using it (Early 2019) and it wasn't that expensive to get compared to Kryonaut.
I've had to remove my cooler to clean it and so on but I've never had to remove it because of the TIM itself having a problem. 

This is the stuff I've been using:
ARCTIC MX-4 2019 Edition - Thermal Compound Paste - Carbon Based High Performance - Heatsink Paste - Thermal Compound CPU for All Coolers, Thermal Interface Material - High Durability - 8 Grams - Newegg.com




 

[freeagent]

Thermalright TFX is perfect for a laptop, and its rated at 14.3 w/mk. 

 

Back when I was looking for info on it I found a thread dealing with laptops and guys loved it. It was their opinions that made me try it for myself. I think it works really well.. its the best TIM I have used so far. I have a tube on order and should be here next week. I did use the spatula to spread it out.. it took some time lol.. its very thick.

[Wh0_Am_1]

9 hours ago, tkitch said:

And as far as "Long term results" ?  Not many people are going to put in the effort when products on consumer PCs have a 2-4 year lifespan, generally.

That's about how long I mean by long term, just not every 6 months to a year.

[Wh0_Am_1]

7 hours ago, freeagent said:

Thermalright TFX is perfect for a laptop, and its rated at 14.3 w/mk. 

 

Back when I was looking for info on it I found a thread dealing with laptops and guys loved it. It was their opinions that made me try it for myself. I think it works really well.. its the best TIM I have used so far. I have a tube on order and should be here next week. I did use the spatula to spread it out.. it took some time lol.. its very thick.

I'll look into it.

[Wh0_Am_1]

8 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

This is probrably the best you'll do for any long term use, esp with a lappy.
Liquid metal is not a good idea for long term use since it has some bad side effects that appears in like 2 to 3 years and you can't really fix the damage.
Repasting doesn't help either, what's done is done related to that.

If you can't get a pad then it's really a matter of doing some homework and although folks love Kryonaut, just know it's a paste/TIM that was originally made and formulated for extreme sub-zero use. 
Because of that it carries a high price tag per gram without enough increase in thermal performance to justify this additional expense for daily use vs what else you can get.
MX4 Carbon is a great TIM and I've used it for awhile now, no problems or need to reapply since I've been using it (Early 2019) and it wasn't that expensive to get compared to Kryonaut.
I've had to remove my cooler to clean it and so on but I've never had to remove it because of the TIM itself having a problem. 

This is the stuff I've been using:
ARCTIC MX-4 2019 Edition - Thermal Compound Paste - Carbon Based High Performance - Heatsink Paste - Thermal Compound CPU for All Coolers, Thermal Interface Material - High Durability - 8 Grams - Newegg.com




 

I already do have that thermal paste on hand (though it probably needs to be replaced as it is from a project from a year ago) My concern is, will this paste maintain performance for the next few years?

[Wh0_Am_1]

9 hours ago, Tech87 said:

TG Kryonaut is the best paste you can get as far as I know.

If you have an Intel cpu, you can undervolt it, which should not only lower the cpu teams by a fair bit, but should mean less heat generated in the laptop compartment as well. May help the GPU a little. Not sure.

 

You could also get yourself a laptop cooling pad, which has fans attached.

 

Those solutions all combined together may be enough.

It's a Ryzen 4800h (sorry I should have specified that the laptop in question is the ASUS TUF506IV) and due to design decisions, even if I use a cooling pad, my VRMs will over heat due to fact that they decided not to cool them, so they limited airflow from right in front of the fans to force the fans to suck air over the VRMs. 

[Wh0_Am_1]

9 hours ago, Levent said:

With that little headroom, I don't think there is anything good enough. My temperatures rose around 15c on my passively cooled laptop after two years. It has no fans or temperatures ever got above 70c. Your only bet might be liquid metal.

 

Possibly, but I understand that liquid metal comes with risks such as seepage, and they are ones I would prefer not to take.

[Wh0_Am_1]

9 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

dont use a paste

well, if you want to try, it can be a solution tho.

Like thermal pads, like thermal grizzly I think it was (not the blue sticky ones).

Would be cool if there is more development around such pads/sheets.

 

Liquid metal has it's downsides, but might be what you want. But a lot of caution and might not be recommended to using it wildly.

 

9 hours ago, narrdarr said:

you'll probably lose a couple degree, but if you want a long term solution. you can use a carbon pad like grizzly thermal carbonaut. 

I was looking at going with IC Graphite, but due to the fact that it's a laptop and that requires that I go through cutting it down, and I am no prodigy at arts and crafts, I figured that I would try thermal paste first.

[freeagent]

3 hours ago, Wh0_Am_1 said:

I already do have that thermal paste on hand (though it probably needs to be replaced as it is from a project from a year ago) My concern is, will this paste maintain performance for the next few years?

I think it’s supposed to be good for 8 years.

[Wh0_Am_1]

4 hours ago, freeagent said:

I think it’s supposed to be good for 8 years.

Supposed to and do are different things. And in most applications the variations of 15C or greater are not game braking. I need (preferably) a paste that will lose less than (based of the performance of MX4) less than ~6C over several years.

 

[freeagent]

Indeed.

 

I haven’t used it for 8 years so I couldn’t tell you. I am using TF8 on my GPU right now and it’s been there for two years. It’s the longest I’ve left anything alone.

[Wh0_Am_1]

1 hour ago, freeagent said:

Indeed.

 

I haven’t used it for 8 years so I couldn’t tell you. I am using TF8 on my GPU right now and it’s been there for two years. It’s the longest I’ve left anything alone.

What's the temperature change on that one?

[freeagent]

45 minutes ago, Wh0_Am_1 said:

What's the temperature change on that one?

I’m not sure what you mean? It depends on my ambient.. if gpu idles at 25 load is usually high 50s low 60s..

[mariushm]

The paste drying out will cause some temperature increase, but not a very high difference. You're gonna have to open up your laptop once a year or so anyway to clean the fan and to blow the dust and hair from the fins (see the yellow circles , under the copper heatpipes if there's fins there and to the left in the picture).

 

All the pastes dry out eventually, but even something as common as mx-4 should last for 2-3 years with maybe 1-2 degrees C "degradation"

 

 

[Wh0_Am_1]

2 hours ago, freeagent said:

I’m not sure what you mean? It depends on my ambient.. if gpu idles at 25 load is usually high 50s low 60s..

Degradation, longterm temperature increase.

[Wh0_Am_1]

2 hours ago, mariushm said:

The paste drying out will cause some temperature increase, but not a very high difference. You're gonna have to open up your laptop once a year or so anyway to clean the fan and to blow the dust and hair from the fins (see the yellow circles , under the copper heatpipes if there's fins there and to the left in the picture).

 

All the pastes dry out eventually, but even something as common as mx-4 should last for 2-3 years with maybe 1-2 degrees C "degradation"

 

 

Yeah cleaning those heatsinks is also on the agenda. I admit that is most likely the source of my issues.