Thermal Paste?!?

[infiniteCurse]

Hey dudes, I recently applied Arctic Silver 5 to my CPU. Does it take a second or two to settle in on temps or should it be instant temp lowering? Please help, im stuck haha

[JR88]

I think AS5 about 24-48hrs curing time. It's old stuff. Should Use MX4 it's not goopey like that stuff and no cure time.

[The Tan Stallion]

Due to the unique shape and sizes of the particles in Arctic Silver 5's conductive matrix, it will take a up to 200 hours and several thermal cycles to achieve maximum particle to particle thermal conduction and for the heatsink to CPU interface to reach maximum conductivity. (This period will be longer in a system without a fan on the heatsink or with a low speed fan on the heatsink.)

[mariushm]

The difference between thermal pastes is a few degrees Celsius, and the difference between "just installed" and "several days old" pastes is usually less than 1-2  degrees Celsius.

 

A lot of motherboards these days will simply adjust fan speed to keep systems more silent, as long as the temperature is below some threshold. So for example, if you previously had the system running at 55c with fan speed at 2000 rpm, the system may nowbe still at 55c but the fan may spin at only 1900 rpm.

 

If you want an accurate comparison between two systems, you would have to lock the fan speed to some percentage or rpm value and compare like that.

Also note that often, you can a decrease in temperature with new pastes because you just happen to also blow the dust from the heatsink and from the fan, so there's more airflow through the heatsink fins and therefore better performance - it may not be just the effect of the thermal paste in play. And in rarer cases, the simple change in pressure (tightening the heatsink more than previous installation) could cause variations in cooling performance

 

Anyway, thermal pastes are not magical, they only change the temperature by a few degrees, don't stress yourself so much about it, and don't expect temps to significantly lower due to installing different paste.

[Neverender]

Many pastes are good enough for anything from stock to basic overclocking. Also, your mileage may vary. I use Ceramique 2, and found it to be better than MX4. Someone else can claim the opposite. I also have Cryorig CP9, and it performs very well compared to MX4. No difference at all.