[SOLVED] Any reason to spend more on advanced thermal compounds?

[bumblebee953]

The usual suspects from Arctic Silver, Arctic Cooling, and Noctua for under $10 are often the most recommended and used thermal compounds on the market. These typically see 1C to 2C differences than stock pre-applied thermal paste.

But for people planning to OC a typical 10700k or 3800X to a modest 4.0-4.3 ghz, are the advanced compounds from the likes of Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut overkill? These compounds have a STAGGERING 30C drops over the cheaper compounds from some reports.

Under what amount of overclocking on what kind of CPUs (I often read people using these on the typical ones like above, vs the enthusiast extremely expensive CPUs) would these be considered overkill? 5 ghz? 5.2 ghz? Isn't cooler always better? Could this be used to make up for suboptimal coolers and/or suboptimal case airflow configurations?

One other thing is these extreme cooling compunds are often pretty much pure liquid metal and that just seems scary to me. Like if applied with not so steady hands can completely annihilate your hardware.

 

[USAFRet]

"a STAGGERING 30C drops over the cheaper compounds from some reports. "

I'd take those reports with large grains of salt.
Specifically, what was the testing methodology?

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermal-paste-comparison,5108.html

 

[CountMike]

The usual suspects from Arctic Silver, Arctic Cooling, and Noctua for under $10 are often the most recommended and used thermal compounds on the market. These typically see 1C to 2C differences than stock pre-applied thermal paste.

But for people planning to OC a typical 10700k or 3800X to a modest 4.0-4.3 ghz, are the advanced compounds from the likes of Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut overkill? These compounds have a STAGGERING 30C drops over the cheaper compounds from some reports.

Under what amount of overclocking on what kind of CPUs (I often read people using these on the typical ones like above, vs the enthusiast extremely expensive CPUs) would these be considered overkill? 5 ghz? 5.2 ghz? Isn't cooler always better? Could this be used to make up for suboptimal coolers and/or suboptimal case airflow configurations?

One other thing is these extreme cooling compunds are often pretty much pure liquid metal and that just seems scary to me. Like if applied with not so steady hands can completely annihilate your hardware.

There's much more to good paste as opposed to "best" or "advanced" pastes. One is how long it lasts before hardening and becoming less effective. Another one is it's viscosity, how well it applies, spreads and sticks to surfaces.
Also have to look at what it's applied to, which kind of surfaces and its roughness as well as if any of surfaces is convex and to which extent.
In case of liquid metal there could be some chemical interactions because you can end up with 3 dissimilar metals that can ruin one or both surfaces. Silicon based pastes prevent that.