Thermal paste head-to-head – does it matter which brand you use?

1. Introduction2. Testing Methodology and Results3. Discussion and Closing Thoughts4. View All Pages

Following on from our previous articles about fan configuration and static pressure vs airflow fans, today we are looking at thermal paste. Specifically, we are hoping to find out whether or not choosing different types of thermal paste actually makes any difference. To do this, we test 7 products from 6 companies to see how much difference thermal paste really makes.

In another article aimed to help out confused PC builders out there, we are answering the age-old question of whether thermal paste really matters. I remember building my first PC and wondering if it really matters – there is certainly a lot of conflicting information about this online. So we are here to help by showing you if there really is any tangible benefit to using different types of thermal paste.

For this test today, we are comparing the following products:

• Arctic Silver 5 – info HERE
• Arctic Silver Céramique 2 – info HERE
• Arctic MX-4 – info HERE
• Cooler Master MasterGel Pro – info HERE
• Cryorig CP15 – info HERE
• EKWB Ectotherm – info HERE
• Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut – info HERE

What thermal paste do you use?

— KitGuru (@kitgurupress) January 9, 2017

Incidentally, we also ran poll on Twitter recently which found 41% of you use Arctic Silver 5, while 25% of you are happy to use whatever comes with your CPU cooler of choice. In this article we will find out if spending just a few pounds extra on 3rd-party thermal paste is worth it.Testing methodology

Testing thermal paste means we have to keep everything constant, including the CPU cooler, as we want to find what difference the thermal paste itself makes.

As such, we used the follow system for testing today:

• Intel i7-4790K CPU
• Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED CPU Cooler
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance 2400MHz DDR3
• Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force Motherboard
• Corsair RM750x PSU
• OCZ Trion 150 SSD

To test each thermal product, we first cleaned off the old thermal paste using an ArtiClean kit (HERE). We then applied the thermal paste using the ‘pea' method – meaning we applied a small blob, the size of a pea, in the centre of the CPU. We repeated this process for each different brand of paste.

To stress the CPU and create excess heat, we overclocked it to 4.5GHz using 1.3v. This may not be the most efficient overclock but it generates plenty of heat which will help us see which thermal paste is best at conducting that heat.

To get an idle temperature reading, we left Windows on the desktop for 10 minutes. To get a load temperature reading, we ran Prime 95 (version 26.6) for 10 minutes before taking a temperature reading. We repeated this process 5 times per paste, taking the average of those figures to present here.

Results

Ambient: 20C.Well, then, there we go – using different brands of thermal paste does make a difference, and actually quite a significant one considering the best paste today helped the CPU come in 4 degrees cooler than the joint-worst paste.

This may not sound like a huge improvement – but to get temperatures lowered by 4 degrees from only changing the thermal paste is quite remarkable if you ask me. This means choosing the right thermal paste is an easy way to reduce the temperature of your CPU before your even get started on a CPU cooler.

Lowering your temperatures by 4 degrees (a 5% improvement) by changing thermal paste is also cheap, given a small tube typically costs only a few quid. It is also relatively pain-free – all you need to do is pop off your current cooler and replace the thermal paste.

If you are building a new PC, or simply want to see the improved temperatures, the best paste on test today was Thermal Grizzly's Kryonaut compound. Given its performance from the testing, we are happy to recommend it to anyone looking for some good-quality thermal paste.

You can buy a 1g tube of Kryonaut for £4.99 from Overclockers UK HERE. Alternatively, you can view their full range of thermal compounds HERE.

KitGuru says: For a cheap, quick and easy way to lower your temperatures, you could considering investing in a new tube of thermal paste – as we have shown today, it really can make a significant difference. A small tube will last for several applications, too, so you can re-use it well into the future. Let us know in the comments what paste you are currently using and if you are thinking of changing it anytime soon.

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