Recommendations for thermal compound

[Dr. Prop]

I am planning a gaming pc build with a i7 8700K cooled by an NZXT Kraken X62. I plan to overclock the CPU to 5.0 GHz. I have very little knowledge about buying thermal compound except that they are not all created equal. What recommendations do you have?

[AskTJ]

Pretty much any paste. MX-4 is good and cheap.

 

Getting to 5.0GHz is not a guarantee. The cooler is good, but you have to take into consideration your Silicon Lottery and the voltage required to get to 5.0GHz.

[Srnewbee]

Here is a quick run down.

There are two kinds of thermal compounds

1) liquid metal

     A. liquid metal pads

2) ceramic 

 

1) Liquid metals conduct electricity and they need to be replaced once a year. This is not for the feint hearted.

A) Liquid metal pads are a bit safer but they also conduct electricity.

2) Most thermal compounds are ceramic compounds. These are the safest since they do not conduct electricity but they are not as effective as liquid metal ones.

 

The difference between the Liquid metal and ceramic is around 5~7 degrees. Liquid metal pads cost significantly more. 

 

Seeing that you want to OC the i7 8700k to 5.0, I recommend going the ceramic route. (FYI, around 30% of the i7 8700 do not hit 5.0)

I reccommend the noctua nt-h1 due to its best price to performance ratio.

[Max_Settings]

This is the best paste you can buy without getting into liquid metal. Not even opinion, straight up facts by measurements.

https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Grizzly-Kryonaut-Grease-Paste/dp/B011F7W3LU/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1533356578&sr=1-1&keywords=thermal+grizzly+kryonaut

[Mooshi]

What you slap on top of the IHS matters less than what Intel slaps under it.

[Dr. Prop]

6 minutes ago, Mooshi said:

What you slap on top of the IHS matters less than what Intel slaps under it.

True, it is possible that Intel could cause the rate limiting heat transfer step to be under the CPU IHS. I have no intention of deliding and potentially ruining my CPU however. I also don't want to pick a thermal compound that is even worse than Intel's and cause the rate limiting heat transfer step to be the thermal paste I bought. Since you similarly wanted to avoid such a bottle neck with your CPU, what thermal paste did you use for your Ryzen R5 1600?

[Dr. Prop]

11 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

This is the best paste you can buy without getting into liquid metal. Not even opinion, straight up facts by measurements.

https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Grizzly-Kryonaut-Grease-Paste/dp/B011F7W3LU/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1533356578&sr=1-1&keywords=thermal+grizzly+kryonaut

Thanks for the recommendation!

[Fullmental]

39 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

This is the best paste you can buy without getting into liquid metal. Not even opinion, straight up facts by measurements.

https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Grizzly-Kryonaut-Grease-Paste/dp/B011F7W3LU/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1533356578&sr=1-1&keywords=thermal+grizzly+kryonaut

If you're looking for the best this is the way to go, but it is relatively expensive if you're doing a lot of builds. For most applications, I stick with IC Diamond 7 or Noctua NT-H1 unless I have an extremely high-end or particularly hot CPU to work with (For example I used it on my 7700K). It seems a waste to use Kryonaut on an i5 or i3 though, for example.

[Max_Settings]

2 minutes ago, Fullmental said:

If you're looking for the best this is the way to go, but it is relatively expensive if you're doing a lot of builds. For most applications, I stick with IC Diamond 7 or Noctua NT-H1 unless I have an extremely high-end or particularly hot CPU to work with (For example I used it on my 7700K). It seems a waste to use Kryonaut on an i5 or i3 though, for example.

But he's doing one build with a 8700K, you want the best.

[Fullmental]

Just now, Max_Settings said:

But he's doing one build with a 8700K, you want the best.

I'm just providing general information that can be used for more than one build. Someone with an i3 or i5 could read this, for example. Why be specific on just one CPU when you can give advice that you can use for more than one build?

[Dr. Prop]

2 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

But he's doing one build with a 8700K, you want the best.

Indeed, I am only planning on doing this one build at the moment. Also, since it has been mentioned to me multiple times that I am not guarenteed 5.0GHz with an 8700K and I am several hundred dollars under what I am prepared to spend right now, I am heavily considering upgrading to the 8086K to guarantee the highest clockspeed I can get. Any thoughts on this?

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, Max_Settings said:

This is the best paste you can buy without getting into liquid metal. Not even opinion, straight up facts by measurements.

https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Grizzly-Kryonaut-Grease-Paste/dp/B011F7W3LU/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1533356578&sr=1-1&keywords=thermal+grizzly+kryonaut

The value of Kyronaut isn't that great,you do get 1-2C better if that's worth it to you though, with MX-4 you get a 4 gram tube that will last a long time.

But personally i've been really liking the NT-H1 that came with my D15 cooler,it applies easily yet seems slightly thicker than MX-4 which is good in case too much is used.

[Max_Settings]

1 minute ago, Blademaster91 said:

The value of Kyronaut isn't that great,you do get 1-2C better if that's worth it to you though, with MX-4 you get a 4 gram tube that will last a long time.

But personally i've been really liking the NT-H1 that came with my D15 cooler,it applies easily yet seems slightly thicker than MX-4 which is good in case too much is used.

Never said anything about value. All I said is that's statistically the best paste there is.

[Max_Settings]

8 minutes ago, Erwins Kitten said:

Indeed, I am only planning on doing this one build at the moment. Also, since it has been mentioned to me multiple times that I am not guarenteed 5.0GHz with an 8700K and I am several hundred dollars under what I am prepared to spend right now, I am heavily considering upgrading to the 8086K to guarantee the highest clockspeed I can get. Any thoughts on this?

Not worth $100 more at all. 100mhz difference isn't worth $100.

[Dr. Prop]

5 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

Not worth $100 more at all. 100mhz difference isn't worth $100.

But it's not $100 dollars more, and nor is it only a 100 MHz difference (prices from PC Part Picker). It's $70 more (which I guess rounds to $100 if you really want it to) and an increase of 300 MHz ($23 per 0.1 GHz). That is still a lot of money per unit of clockspeed, but it isn't $100.

 

I also have a use case that benefits from each 0.1 GHz increase in clockspeed. I sim quite a lot using Microsoft Flight Simulator X which is poorly designed for hardware optimization and can barely manage an inconsistent 30 frames per second on my current PC with addons and scenarios I want to fly in (specs in signature). It benefits from faster CPUs, and 5.0 GHz is the current standard for decent frame rates with addons. I realize LTT is not a flight sim community, so I will probably take this discussion to another forum and see if they think I am equally crazy and desperate to light my money on fire.

[Max_Settings]

14 minutes ago, Erwins Kitten said:

But it's not $100 dollars more, and nor is it only a 100 MHz difference (prices from PC Part Picker). It's $70 more (which I guess rounds to $100 if you really want it to) and an increase of 300 MHz ($23 per 0.1 GHz). That is still a lot of money per unit of clockspeed, but it isn't $100.

 

I also have a use case that benefits from each 0.1 GHz increase in clockspeed. I sim quite a lot using Microsoft Flight Simulator X which is poorly designed for hardware optimization and can barely manage an inconsistent 30 frames per second on my current PC with addons and scenarios I want to fly in (specs in signature). It benefits from faster CPUs, and 5.0 GHz is the current standard for decent frame rates with addons. I realize LTT is not a flight sim community, so I will probably take this discussion to another forum and see if they think I am equally crazy and desperate to light my money on fire.

Hmmm I never studied FSX, but you might benefit from more cores over clock speed. Last time I played it I remember there being lots of assets. You might actually benefit from Threadripper for that high core count. However you would have to check that as I’m not 100% sure.

[Dr. Prop]

7 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

Hmmm I never studied FSX, but you might benefit from more cores over clock speed. Last time I played it I remember there being lots of assets. You might actually benefit from Threadripper for that high core count. However you would have to check that as I’m not 100% sure.

Thank you for your help and advice Max_Settings.

 

FWIW and for those interested, the best source I have on FSX pc building (https://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html) strongly states that Intel outperforms AMD and FSX gets heavily diminishing returns after 6 cores. Because of its poor code architecture, FSX also can't use more than 8GB of RAM and poorly utilizes any and all graphics card setups (especially SLI), choosing instead to dump its calculation needs onto the CPU whenever possible. It thus transpires that a 12 year old piece of software is harder to get consistently high frame rates in than the latest AAA games.

[cTurtle98]

@AlexTheGreatish recommended noctua NT-H1 to me at LTX

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

gelid gc extreme

[AlexTheGreatish]

13 hours ago, Erwins Kitten said:

 Also, since it has been mentioned to me multiple times that I am not guarenteed 5.0GHz with an 8700K

Although I don't think I'd go as far as guaranteeing an 8700K will hit 5.0GHz - anytime someone has thought they couldn't hit 5GHz in my experience was actually just really bad at overclocking.  It can be a bit difficult to get a non-ideal unit cooled at 5GHz, so delidding might be required, but with a good mobo and some OC know how you can probably do 5GHz on stock paste.

15 hours ago, Erwins Kitten said:

I am planning a gaming pc build with a i7 8700K cooled by an NZXT Kraken X62. I plan to overclock the CPU to 5.0 GHz. I have very little knowledge about buying thermal compound except that they are not all created equal. What recommendations do you have?

Since liquid coolers generally have a higher mounting pressure your best bet is either IC Diamond or Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut.  Check out this article to learn more.

[Fullmental]

On 8/4/2018 at 2:05 AM, Max_Settings said:

Hmmm I never studied FSX, but you might benefit from more cores over clock speed. Last time I played it I remember there being lots of assets. You might actually benefit from Threadripper for that high core count. However you would have to check that as I’m not 100% sure.

Fsx is from about 2005-2006 and is not optimized for multiple threads. You have to hack the config file to even enable multithreaded processing, and even then only a small number of tasks can be offloaded to other cores this way. Since core performance is king here.

 

A quad core might help if you run a ton of add-ons, but beyond that you get very little in return, if anything.