Which thermal paste?

[Deagon]

I'm liquid cooling my CPU with an AIO I'll be doing the same thing when I build my new pc. I'm using a micronized silver paste, but it just isn't performing as i'd hoped. 

[zzenigmaxzz]

arctic silver works well

[Zvesda]

Yep ^, gotta second that Arctic Silver.

[Dabasepc]

MX-4 u can't go wrong.

NH-T1 also good

[Guest]

Third Arctic Silver 5

[Deagon]

I'm currently using Arctic silver 5 I was disappointed at its performance as compared to some random nameless gold colored junk i got for a few cents from ebay. 
​I've seen conductive ones you can use that are better but not sure they are worth the price. 

[TheRagingGamer]

If someone can prove me that different thermal pastes make even 1C difference i will eat a dick on camera. 

[HaloFan9087]

Second NT-H1.

[zzenigmaxzz]

If someone can prove me that different thermal pastes make even 1C difference i will eat a dick on camera. 

http://www.maximumpc.com/geek-tested-17-thermal-pastes-face-off/

 

open wide

[Br3tt96]

Thermal Grizzly

[Briggsy]

Go with something modern like tuniq tx-4 or equivalent. I've tested a lot of pastes, and have been using tx-4 for a while because I've not found anything better but there are also good pastes from Gelid and Noctua that are on par. Avoid older pastes like arctic silver that have a 200 hours burn in time and don't perform as well as newer pastes.

[TheMechEngineer]

I recently tried Arctic MX-2 and it was pretty good. Used it to re-gunk my graphics card.

Before it would normally reach 66 degrees Celcius, but now it's at around 61 degrees under the same load.

Sure it could be the Placebo effect, and all thermal pastes are the same and ambient temperatures change etc etc. but it definitely seemed to help at least.

[Deagon]

Well I hobbled together an old machine of my girlfriend's, when we got together, she told me about this poor neglected computer she had that didn't work, and people that she took it to (because she is a gamer and not really a computer builder, which is fine with me) basically either didn't know what was wrong with or what do to. When I got a look at it, i discovered a charred dust biscuit between the heat sink and fan. I cleaned it all up got all the dust out of it, and got it to boot. I discovered that its a Phenom II x4 920 running at 2.8 ghz, some old DDR2 and a radeon HD 6850 Not ideal, and would constantly crash even under light loads but after tossing a cooler master 360MM  AIO cooler and some paste in there to keep the CPU temp down, did a decent job, would like to see some lower temps under high loads, but it can handle games and stuff now with decent settings and not crash (which was the issue, which is why i choose this cooler, so i could still use it on other CPU's in the very near future). I'm building a new little gaming rig for her, but, i intend on finding the best thermal pastes for my CPU and GPU coolers when i build her new rig. 
 

Just using the AIO to vent the heat outside of the case helped greatly with GPU stability. I know the ideal situation is to just build a new one, but it'll take a bit of time, i just need this to live a few more weeks. Thermal paste choices will be for the new rig. Thanks for the advice everyone!

 

I'd love to see a linus tech tips video about this.