Thermal Paste >20 W/mK ?

[Aereldor]

So in this video about a graphite thermal pad, Linus says that Thermal Paste generaly has a thermal conductivity between 10 and 20 W/mK. He then says that really good ones can get to about 30.

 

Where are these magic thermal pastes? I'll gladly pay a premium to have a safe thermal paste that performs closer to liquid metal than my average joe MX4, but I literally can't find anything around there. THe best I've found was Kryonaut Extreme at 14.2. 

 

Where are these unicorn thermal pastes hiding?

[Tan3l6]

SYY-157 is reportedly 15,7 W/mK .. that's the highest I am aware of.

But the thermal conductivity measurement is not standardized.

Only lm is imo higher than 20W/mK.

[jaslion]

Thermal conductivity is just a number extremely high conductive stuff can still be terrible. I mean look at noctua's paste it's thermal conductivity is extremely low yet it is one of the better thermal pastes on the market.

 

Between the best thermal paste and your mx4 you might see 1 MAYBE 2c difference.

[Aereldor]

1 minute ago, jaslion said:

Thermal conductivity is just a number extremely high conductive stuff can still be terrible. I mean look at noctua's paste it's thermal conductivity is extremely low yet it is one of the better thermal pastes on the market.

 

Between the best thermal paste and your mx4 you might see 1 MAYBE 2c difference.

As opposed to like 10c with liquid metal? RIP looks like I just gotta bite the bullet, use liquid metal, and just reapply once it's gone and alloyed with the copper on my heatsink lmao

[freeagent]

I am using SYY-157, I like it.

[Tan3l6]

11 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Thermal conductivity is just a number extremely high conductive stuff can still be terrible. I mean look at noctua's paste it's thermal conductivity is extremely low yet it is one of the better thermal pastes on the market.

 

Between the best thermal paste and your mx4 you might see 1 MAYBE 2c difference.

Yeah, Noctua is not reporting their "official" thermal conductivity afaik.

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/guru3d-thermal-paste-roundup-2019,2.html

And it's not a silver bullet, but yeah there are many other factors than reported thermal conductivity.

Noctua's is very good - NT-H1 / NT-H2 but not the best.

[Aereldor]

4 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

Yeah, Noctua is not reporting their "official" thermal conductivity afaik.

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/guru3d-thermal-paste-roundup-2019,2.html

And it's not a silver bullet, but yeah there are many other factors than reported thermal conductivity.

Noctua's is very good - NT-H1 / NT-H2 but not the best.

Yeah, I'm looking at either the SYY-157 or the Kryonaut, but if I don't need to reapply liquid metal frequently and can just sort of do it and forget about it, then I'm happy to go full send. I'm quite confident in the application method and don't see a lot of risks if I use the requisite amount of conformal coating and electrical tape

[Space646]

51 minutes ago, soundlogic said:

So in this video about a graphite thermal pad, Linus says that Thermal Paste generaly has a thermal conductivity between 10 and 20 W/mK. He then says that really good ones can get to about 30.

 

Where are these magic thermal pastes? I'll gladly pay a premium to have a safe thermal paste that performs closer to liquid metal than my average joe MX4, but I literally can't find anything around there. THe best I've found was Kryonaut Extreme at 14.2. 

 

Where are these unicorn thermal pastes hiding?

The best Thermal Paste I found is a Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut, and it's 73W/mK,

But it's conductive (liquid metal) so it can short and brick your motherboard

Edited November 19, 2021 by Space646

[Tan3l6]

1 minute ago, Space646 said:

The best Thermal Paste is a Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut, and it's 73W/mK,

But it's conductive (there's metal inside) so it can short and brick your motherboard

Nah, not really a paste, perhaps more of a lm?

I know it might seem nitpicking, but there is a big difference between lm and paste.

[Aereldor]

3 minutes ago, Space646 said:

The best Thermal Paste is a Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut, and it's 73W/mK,

But it's conductive (liquid metal) so it can short and brick your motherboard

Yeah, I meant besides liquid metal. So far what's come up is 15.7 mw/k for the SYY 157, which has some issues of its own. 

 

I'm pretty confident in the application process, should be fine. May not even put it on the GPu, we'll see.

[Tan3l6]

5 minutes ago, soundlogic said:

Yeah, I meant besides liquid metal. So far what's come up is 15.7 mw/k for the SYY 157

From China (Aliexpress) there also is Thermagic ZF-12 (12W/mK) much cheaper, but I guess it's not really a factor, as paste is good for years.

I was going to suggest ZF-EX, but for some reason that's not for sale anymore...

 

But the difference for top pastes is still miniscule:

 

[Space646]

1 minute ago, soundlogic said:

Yeah, I meant besides liquid metal. So far what's come up is 15.7 mw/k for the SYY 157

I currently use a Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut with a AMD Ryzen 7 3700x, and the temps are very good (I also use a SilentumPC Fortis 3), so I also recommend that

[Dedayog]

59 minutes ago, soundlogic said:

As opposed to like 10c with liquid metal? RIP looks like I just gotta bite the bullet, use liquid metal, and just reapply once it's gone and alloyed with the copper on my heatsink lmao

If 10c makes a difference to you, go ahead.  Going from 70c to 60c means nothing at all to a CPU.

 

I wouldn't use Liquid Metal as replacement for thermal paste.

[freeagent]

20 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Going from 70c to 60c means nothing at all to a CPU.

No, but going from 90 to 80 is a big deal for a  CPU that is trying to boost. TFX is probably the best TIM I have used so far, but its pretty expensive. For the price, SYY-157 is the best pick for me for now..

[Aereldor]

1 hour ago, Dedayog said:

If 10c makes a difference to you, go ahead.  Going from 70c to 60c means nothing at all to a CPU.

 

I wouldn't use Liquid Metal as replacement for thermal paste.

Well, with my undervolt the CPU holds at its max turbo of 3.4ghz all-core indefinitely, around 95 under a combined load, but that's with the fans running full blast, on top of a laptop stand that has 3 more 120mm fans in it.

I'd like to overclock the GPU which I currently don't have the headroom for, and to run the laptop fanless and cool under moderate loads. Right now, it even idles above 50, so the fans can come on under very low loads. 

 

In HWInfo64, my fans only appear to have 3 settings - off, 50%, and 100%. Bit of a pipe dream, but I'd love to be able to run this laptop full blast at 50% fan speeds, at which point they're barely audible. 

[RejZoR]

Avoid liquid metal. It's absolute nightmare to deal with and it brings more trouble than benefits. It stains everything, diffuses into everything, even into nickel platted surfaces and because it does that it just dries up in a month time causing temperature problems and hard crashes because there just wasn't any LM left there to make contact. Just no. Go with Kryonaut or CoolerMaster Mastergel Maker. Basically best money can buy and they are regular thermal pastes that are easy to clean, stain nothing, don't diffuse into anything and don't get useless for years, non conductive. They are just better. I've applied LM several times and I always had severe problems after like a month when it just diffused into copper and even nickel platted IHS of CPU making it look like vomit. I literally had to sand off surface to clean it. Never again.

[Aereldor]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Avoid liquid metal. It's absolute nightmare to deal with and it brings more trouble than benefits. It stains everything, diffuses into everything, even into nickel platted surfaces and because it does that it just dries up in a month time causing temperature problems and hard crashes because there just wasn't any LM left there to make contact. Just no. Go with Kryonaut or CoolerMaster Mastergel Maker. Basically best money can buy and they are regular thermal pastes that are easy to clean, stain nothing, don't diffuse into anything and don't get useless for years, non conductive. They are just better. I've applied LM several times and I always had severe problems after like a month when it just diffused into copper and even nickel platted IHS of CPU making it look like vomit. I literally had to sand off surface to clean it. Never again.

Are you sure? I've seen a bunch of examples where it was left on for a year - yes, a lot of it alloys with the copper, but the resulting alloy is as thermally conductive as the original copper, and because it was applied to both the heatsink AND the cpu die, the stuff on the CPU remained liquid.

 

Don't mean to invalidate your experience but this is jsut the first I've heard about it completely drying out. I don't really care about it staining the bottom of the copper heatsink, I'm never gonna see that shit lol.

 

Also, this is for a laptop, so no IHS, going right on the die.

[RejZoR]

16 hours ago, soundlogic said:

Are you sure? I've seen a bunch of examples where it was left on for a year - yes, a lot of it alloys with the copper, but the resulting alloy is as thermally conductive as the original copper, and because it was applied to both the heatsink AND the cpu die, the stuff on the CPU remained liquid.

 

Don't mean to invalidate your experience but this is jsut the first I've heard about it completely drying out. I don't really care about it staining the bottom of the copper heatsink, I'm never gonna see that shit lol.

 

Also, this is for a laptop, so no IHS, going right on the die.

I'm sure. I've tried it and it did that. Tried it again after a while because I could F something up. It did exactly the same thing again. I cna't do it wrong twice and I even followed application the way der8baur did it. Exactly.

[Aereldor]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I'm sure. I've tried it and it did that. Tried it again after a while because I could F something up. It did exactly the same thing again. I cna't do it wrong twice and I even followed application the way der8baur did it. Exactly.

So what exactly were your results then? How long did it take for the entirety of the liquid metal to alloy with the copper? How high did your temps get? Was there any liquid left on the CPU? What was the surface of the cooler - stained or all fucked up and cratered like aluminium gets with Gallium?

[Guest]

23 hours ago, Dedayog said:

If 10c makes a difference to you, go ahead.  Going from 70c to 60c means nothing at all to a CPU.

 

I wouldn't use Liquid Metal as replacement for thermal paste.

OOoohhhh weeeellllll, not too sure about that.

 

High temp alert on Ryzen processors (All version according to all the white papers I've thumbed through) is at 70c. On a stock system, the CPU fan will be commanded 100% Duty cycle.

 

With testing PBO and the boost algorithm, you'd notice better boost clocks running under 70c than over it. Just a heads up of some technical information for you. 

[Dedayog]

22 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

OOoohhhh weeeellllll, not too sure about that.

 

High temp alert on Ryzen processors (All version according to all the white papers I've thumbed through) is at 70c. On a stock system, the CPU fan will be commanded 100% Duty cycle.

 

With testing PBO and the boost algorithm, you'd notice better boost clocks running under 70c than over it. Just a heads up of some technical information for you. 

I'd get a better cooling solution then, way before going to Liquid Metal.

 

But thanks for the info, didn't realize Ryzen had issues at 70c like that.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

I'd get a better cooling solution then, way before going to Liquid Metal.

 

But thanks for the info, didn't realize Ryzen had issues at 70c like that.

Not sure if it's "issues" at that temps really. You can only increase to 75c on the fan profiles right?

 

I agree to better cooling though. My paste is only 8.5wmk. Seems to do just fine.

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, soundlogic said:

So what exactly were your results then? How long did it take for the entirety of the liquid metal to alloy with the copper? How high did your temps get? Was there any liquid left on the CPU? What was the surface of the cooler - stained or all fucked up and cratered like aluminium gets with Gallium?

About a month. I've spotted it with hard system crashes while gaming and couldn't figure out why. Until I remembered that was the only change. And upon taking cooler off there was just no liquid metal between both. It entirely diffused into copper. I've applied LM to my graphic card and CPU. Graphic card, when it wasn't cooled as it should was just locking up system (initially I thought it was shorting with capacitors around GPU somehow, but after protecting all of them it repeated in same time period). After re-applying regular thermal paste issues were instantly gone.

 

No, it wasn't corroded like aluminium, it was just heavily "silver/grey" stained copper color. And IHS of CPU was all "colorful", but in grey scale. Basically like someone vomited 50 shades of grey on it to a point I couldn't even read engravings on the IHS anymore. Maybe if I kept adding LM and let it diffuse into copper to a point it would stop doing that. Since copper has thermal conductivity of 400 W/m K and LM has around 70, I wouldn't want bunch of LM be mixing with copper...

 

Reason why no one talks about this is because everyone who hype LM (in terms of wow what a temperature drop), like Linus, JayzTwoCents, even Der8auer only apply it for the bench and strip it off afterwards for the next whatever combo they make up. I make it more permanent solution and this was a repeatable problem. I very much doubt IHS on my Intel Core i7 Haswell-E series was anything special or that copper on AORUS GTX 1080Ti was any different than any other copper.

 

I'm on CoolerMaster Nano Maker and Kryonaut (both pastes are about the same in performance) for like 2-3 years and I've had ZERO problems. Good temps and zero issues with any staining, cleaning, diffusion or drying.

 

Would like to know why I seem to be the only one with this issue and what is application in PS5 that it has no such issue and it's expected to run for long time without any servicing. Certainly more than a month...

[Dogzilla07]

https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/best-thermal-paste

On 11/19/2021 at 3:55 PM, soundlogic said:

I'd like to overclock the GPU which I currently don't have the headroom for, and to run the laptop fanless and cool under moderate loads. Right now, it even idles above 50, so the fans can come on under very low loads. 

What works best for GPU and CPU is different, due to the nature of mounting pressure amount, and pressure points, thermal cycling, for GPUs you want the high viscosity, thick, annoying very hard to spread pastes/TIM (Thermal Interface Material). For CPU cooling, it's the way around, a low viscosity thin, easy to spread paste/TIM is gonna work great in most cases.

 

That's where SYY 157 and its big brother Thermaltake TFX come in, SYY 157 is gonna shine for GPU usage, same like Phobya NanoGrease Extreme, Thermaltake TF8, Batman ZF-12, and to a lesser degree (but still better than all other pastes/TIM), the new Cooler Master Pro v2, Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut and Gelid GC Extreme.

 

That's about it for the GPUs, and especially in Laptops, where this is even more important.

 

As for the CPU, cross-reference the tomshardware list and guru3d list, but standout stuff is Arctic MX-5 (very runny, toothpaste like), the new Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Extreme (fixes some of the problems of the original), Noctua NT-H2, Prolimatech PK-3, again Cooler Master Mastergel Pro V2 (very thick, not hard to spread, is kind-of a jack of all trades), Kingpin KPx, Be Quiet! DC1 and many many others. The differences and constraints are less than for GPU/Laptop (check your use case scenario ,tomshardware has low mounting pressure Air, high mounting pressure Air and high mounting pressure Water separately), and choose by price.

 

Two more good pieces of advice, storing the paste in the fridge will prolong it's shelf-life (for 99% of them, some don't like, but very rare), and no.2 thick viscous paste and hybrids will last longer in storage overall.

[freeagent]

I don't need to pull my 3070 Ti apart yet, but I put SYY-157 on everything else

 

5600X/5900X Thermalright FC140

3770K Thermalright TS140P

 

GTX 980 Classified

GTX 580 Matrix Platinum.. thankfully retired again..

 

Its good stuff, TFX is probably the best I have used so far, but crazy expensive, though it may be on sale now..

 

SYY was cheap enough for me to burn through while I learned and perfected my mount for AM4 with a few different coolers..