Best CPU/Heatsink thermal paste out there?

[NewBie_0]

I need your help suggesting a top-notch thermal paste for high-end gaming computers which is kept under heavy workloads almost 17 hours a day, and I have decided to just pick the best thermal paste for this purpose, no matter how much it costs.

While doing my own search online, I have found this good article that suggests that Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut is the best cpu thermal paste available out there as of this year. The writer claims that he came to this conclusion after researching hardware experts' websites and adopting their verdicts.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Dawny]

Actually I made my own research on this particular topic and read several reviews and tests and can tell you with certainty that what your article (http://www.computermonger.com/the-best-thermal-paste-for-cpu-cooling/) suggests is true. Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut is king in this field. That's my personal humble opinion. If anyone has something else to say it would be great.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Well there aren't any that are really "bad" and when comparing the top names you're kinda splitting hairs. I myself have a nice big syringe of Arctic Silver Ceramique II. It works great. I can't really say much about the others but I don't think that anyone would say that Arctic Silver Ceramique II isn't a fantastic thermal paste. In fact, anything made by Arctic Silver is very highly regarded.

 

[Ecky]

As Avro says, most top-end pastes will perform within 1-2c of one another, with the exception of gallium-based liquid metal compounds, which tend to permanently alter (arguably damage) any surface they're used on. I myself use CL Liquid Ultra between my heatspreader and die, and Noctua's NT-H1 between heatspreader and heatsink, and I'm not in the lease bit interested in buying something different. My CPU is generally 40-50c away from thermal throttling even under heavy loads, and I have strong evidence that there is no real benefit to lowering temperatures further.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Actually I made my own research on this particular topic and read several reviews and tests and can tell you with certainty that what your article (http://www.computermonger.com/the-best-thermal-paste-for-cpu-cooling/) suggests is true. Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut is king in this field. That's my personal humble opinion. If anyone has something else to say it would be great.

I must agree that Thermal Grizzy Kryonaut is the "best non-liquid metal" thermal paste out there but there is a caveat to that. As I stated earlier, among the well-known brands, you're splitting hairs. Here is a graph to ilustrate:

So as you can see, Kryonaut is indeed the "best" thermal paste out there but the difference across these pastes from "best" to "worst" is 2C at idle and 3C at load. That's nothing, hell it would even be considered within the margin of error for the test. A good CPU cooling fan does far more than the brand of thermal paste you use. Pick one that is rated well and doesn't cost a lot. Out of that list, I personally would choose whatever is cheapest because 2C here and 3C there is not going to make one bit of real-world difference to your CPU.

 

[Avro Arrow]

As Avro says, most top-end pastes will perform within 1-2c of one another, with the exception of gallium-based liquid metal compounds, which tend to permanently alter (arguably damage) any surface they're used on. I myself use CL Liquid Ultra between my heatspreader and die, and Noctua's NT-H1 between heatspreader and heatsink, and I'm not in the lease bit interested in buying something different. My CPU is generally 40-50c away from thermal throttling even under heavy loads, and I have strong evidence that there is no real benefit to lowering temperatures further.

Yeah, I hear that Noctua NT-H1 is really good stuff too. Funny thing, I once received as a bonus for something I got off ebay (can't remember what) of three syringes of CPU thermal paste that I never knew the name of because it was written in Chinese and the only English words were "CPU paste". I grabbed an old Core2Duo I had lying around and made a makeshift HTPC with an equally old Palit GeForce 8500GT GPU. Believe it or not, even this unknown Chinese brand of thermal paste did the job just fine.

EDIT: Haha! Found it! This stuff is so cheap it's hilarious, but it works just fine!:

Stupidly Cheap (2 for $1) Thermal Paste from eBay that works!

Now that I think about it, I'll make this my recommendation because the stuff works just fine and you can do probably ten CPUs with it for $1 instead of the $20 for the Kryonaut. It's called ZP Thermal Compound and I found a seemingly legit review and test of the stuff where the result is that it's on par with Arctic Silver 5!:
XBox Experts Forum ZP Thermal Compound Heat Stress Test