5W/mK conductivity thermal paste good for a 105W thermal power cpu?

[Fat Cat11997]

I'm planning to build a pc with a ryzen 7 7700x, which has a thermal output of 105 watts, but I don't know what thermal conductivity my thermal paste for it should have. I've already found a 5w/mK thermal paste, but i'm not sure if it'll be sufficient.

[RONOTHAN##]

What paste? The specific paste is largely more important than the thermal conductivity, since the graphite pads have some of the best thermal conductivity outside of liquid metal, but have worse performance than most decent thermal pastes. 

 

 

As long as the paste is mildly respected though, not just the cheapest stuff you can buy on eBay, it's probably fine. 

[Fat Cat11997]

5 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

What paste? The specific paste is largely more important than the thermal conductivity, since the graphite pads have some of the best thermal conductivity outside of liquid metal, but have worse performance than most decent thermal pastes. 

The paste specs say zinc-oxide based compound is that good?

[WereCat]

It doesn't matter as there is no standard for thermal conductivity measurements so you can't compare the numbers between brands. 

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Fat Cat11997 said:

The paste specs say zinc-oxide based compound is that good?

It can be. Again, this depends more on the specific paste than anything, you can't just look at a spec sheet and ingredients list to figure out what it's made of. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

4 minutes ago, WereCat said:

It doesn't matter as there is no standard for thermal conductivity measurements so you can't compare the numbers between brands. 

^^^

thermal conductivity is garbage for thermal pastes and you can only know how well it performs by just testing and comparing it

 

for a cheap thermal paste i can reccomend id highly reccomend gd007 as it doesnt have the oil seperation issues of gd900 and it should perform similarly to arctic mx4, theres also the new gd-2 but im unsure of how good it is as ive only used it once so far

[Fat Cat11997]

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

It can be. Again, this depends more on the specific paste than anything, you can't just look at a spec sheet and ingredients list to figure out what it's made of. 

You said earlier that it's important to get a reputable brand, and I think it is. It's made by Corsair and on Microcenter has 60 reviews and an average of 4.7 stars

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Fat Cat11997 said:

You said earlier that it's important to get a reputable brand, and I think it is. It's made by Corsair and on Microcenter has 60 reviews and an average of 4.7 stars

Then it's probably good enough. I think I know the paste you're referencing, TM30, and while it's not amazing it's good enough. The difference between the good pastes is usually 2-3c at most, so you will be fine with it. 

 

That said, since it sounds like you're buying a new computer, the CPU cooler will come with thermal paste that's also good enough, so you might as well use that. 

[Fat Cat11997]

6 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Then it's probably good enough. I think I know the paste you're referencing, TM30, and while it's not amazing it's good enough. The difference between the good pastes is usually 2-3c at most, so you will be fine with it. 

 

That said, since it sounds like you're buying a new computer, the CPU cooler will come with thermal paste that's also good enough, so you might as well use that. 

Oh, my cpu cooler does have paste. Thanks

[BiotechBen]

I've got xtm50 on my 1080 and it's perfectly fine for daily use. Had some tm30 on my 2600x, ran a little warm. Changed it to xtm50 and dropped a few degrees C on stock cooling. W/MK is an indicator for performance, but is far from everything.

[Blue4130]

On 2/28/2024 at 1:17 PM, BiotechBen said:

 W/MK is an indicator for performance, but is far from everything.

The problem is the way it is tested is not standardized. So Paste A claims 5.5w/mk and Paste B claims 12.5 w/mk, but they use different methods to test and in fact, both are the same...