thermal paste Best Thermal Paste In Terms Of Longevity?

[_Pyro]

So I've been searching for best thermal paste in terms of its effective service life  lately and got stuck in a dead end.
I need a thermal paste for my gaming laptop that can last for a minimal of 1-2 years, any recommendations?

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 minute ago, _Pyro said:

So I've been searching for best thermal paste in terms of its effective service life  lately and got stuck in a dead end.
I need a thermal paste for my gaming laptop that can last for a minimal of 1-2 years, any recommendations?

Literally all pastes should last 1-2 years, good pastes considerably longer.

 

Arctic MX-6, Noctua NT-H1 should last 5+ years, or if you really want to go nuts Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut transfers the heat a little better but maybe needs re-pasting more often.

 

Honestly, in real-world use it makes very little difference.  I've never even re-pasted my gaming laptop.  I don't routinely re-paste anything.

[SImoHayha]

Really any thermal paste will last that long. You don't need to really worry too much you're gonna eventaully need to replace it anyway. just replace it and just do what you do.

[8tg]

Minimum of 1-2 years? Literally anything marketed as thermal paste.

Metallic pastes will go for 5ish years or longer. Ceramic pastes will last for decades.

Not a time scale you need to worry about, buy whatever paste you feel fits your needs.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I honestly will never understand people who make a big deal out of thermal paste, unless they're overclocking and trying to get that last bit of performance out of their hardware.

 

On a laptop, the problem is not so much getting the heat into the cooler - its the cooler being tiny compared to a desktop so it quickly gets saturated.  I really don't think what paste you use will make any tangible difference at all.

 

I've tried a few different ones on my desktops and never seen a difference that couldn't be put down to margin of error, differences in paste application, tightening the cooler differently between attempts.

[Godlygamer23]

Any quality thermal paste will last years - I would even claim pastes could last 10 years before requiring to be reapplied. I wouldn't give it too much thought. 

 

The point of requiring replacement would be the cooling performance simply being insufficient, which you might be able to tell - depending on your configuration - how quickly your fans increase in speed, which would be the result of higher temperatures being reached at an earlier point.

Edited December 17, 2023 by Godlygamer23

[RevGAM]

If you want something that will last a very long time, the best choice are phase-change TIMs like Honeywell PTM7950. 

[Orion_]

Not to be rude, but a lot of these comments are completely wrong about TIM in gaming laptops. Particularly that Kryonaut will last more than a month, it wont. Your best choice for TIM in a laptop is to replace the pads with a putty like Upsiren U6, TG PP 10, etc and replace the paste with liquid metal or Honeywell PTM 7950. The vast majority of higher performing pastes that last a year or more on a desktop will barely make it a month or two in a laptop before they pump out. The last time I tried to use Kryonaut in particular you could genuinely see the temps go up day by day until they were back to throttling.