Best Thermal Paste for CPUs 2024: 90 Pastes Tested and Ranked

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COLGeek said:
Title corrected. Content remains.

There will ALWAYS be more products than any review can assess. Maybe these can be considered for a future review.
Click to expand...
What about Honeywell PTM7950 (pad and paste versions)? Is it in the list yet, or are phase-change TIMs excluded?
 
Has TH considered doing a long term review of TIMs on bare die vs. heat spreaders?

I used Noctua's NT-H1, and it works okay on a CPU heat spreader, but it pumped out from my laptop and GPU. It seems like NT-H1 is not good on bare dies that constantly hit +85C and the TIM only lasted some 6 to 8 months.

Having done more research, I am now trying out Fuzeice plus and Thermalright TFX. They are supposed to be resistant to thermal pump out.
 
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Notton said:
Has TH considered doing a long term review of TIMs on bare die vs. heat spreaders?

I used Noctua's NT-H1, and it works okay on a CPU heat spreader, but it pumped out from my laptop and GPU. It seems like NT-H1 is not good on bare dies that constantly hit +85C and the TIM only lasted some 6 to 8 months.

Having done more research, I am now trying out Fuzeice plus and Thermalright TFX. They are supposed to be resistant to thermal pump out.
Click to expand...
You should also try SYY and PTM.
 
Man, I have so many TIMs, and they aren't even on the list. Some are older, some are newer...Here are just a few.
Logisys Z3
DeepCool Logisys Z5
Thermalright CF2
Spire Thermal Kit (SP455/5G)
Bitspower TP-1
Gelid GC-Supreme
Evercool TC-25
Swiftech TM-2

Do any stand out as being near the top of the list?
 
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Surely anything at 1.0W/mk doesn't really bear considering, despite the price at 0.05£/gram. So how can it feature in this list and be a good choice( #10 paupers choice). Makes me question if this guide was written by AI or just not fit for purpose.
Also aging of thermal interface layers seems to be the number one killer, so why not include some info on that...
 
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Thanks for updating this article, but please update the Arctic MX-5 entry! I bought MX-6 more than 1 year ago. It's widely available, so no reason to keep up the old entry for the discontinued MX-5 stuff.

This article appears to do a good job explaining the differences between them and MX-4.

www.electronicshub.org

Arctic MX-4 vs MX-5 vs MX-6

MX-4 vs. MX-6 thermal paste: which reigns supreme? Explore conductivity, ease of use, durability for overclocking & high-performance PCs. Choose wisely & keep your CPU cool!
www.electronicshub.org www.electronicshub.org

I've got machines running for more than 10 years on MX-4 and still have cooling performance similar to when I built them. For this reason, I'm partial to using MX-6 in new builds. The claimed thermal conductivity of 10.5 W/mK is close enough to the top performers that I'm pretty content with it.
 
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Thanks for the update! It's awesome to see Thermal Grizzly Kryosheet in there, though I'm puzzled by the inconsistent results. Was the same sheet reused? I think that might not the best idea. Or maybe the heatsink had some flatness/conformity issue that's better handled by pastes?

Glad to see Arctic MX-6 is finally included, though I'm a bit disappointed to see it improves over MX-4 by less than 1 degree. I will still probably use it, because I haven't found Arctic MX-4 to degrade at all, and I'm expecting no less from MX-6. I'm hardly doing LN2 cooling, here!
: D
 
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I have always wondered if Liquid Metal actually fills the gaps as well as paste given the lower viscosity and ability to be spread into very thin layers. Perhaps the reason we are seeing similar performance between LM and paste is due to this? I would love to experiment with different heat spreader heights to see if LM just needs a tighter interface gap between heat spreader and cold plate, and I would also imagine, given LM’s lower viscosity and layer thickness, that concavity/convexity of the heat spreader/cold plate would also negatively affect LM greater than paste.

To conclude, I hypothesize that, in order to get the most performance out of LM, greater precision IE: Cost in the manufacturing of heat spreaders/cold plates to achieve tighter tolerances is the limiting factor to realize the greater thermal conductivity of LM tims.
 
The Historical Fidelity said:
I would love to experiment with different heat spreader heights to see if LM just needs a tighter interface gap between heat spreader and cold plate, and I would also imagine, given LM’s lower viscosity and layer thickness, that concavity/convexity of the heat spreader/cold plate would also negatively affect LM greater than paste.

To conclude, I hypothesize that, in order to get the most performance out of LM, greater precision IE: Cost in the manufacturing of heat spreaders/cold plates to achieve tighter tolerances is the limiting factor to realize the greater thermal conductivity of LM tims.
Click to expand...
You can find some answers to these questions, in more overclocking-oriented forums, when they talk about heatsink and IHS lapping. You can find people claiming the temperatures before & after lapping, then check which TIM they used.
 
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USAFRet said:
"last updated November 22, 2023"

What new ones are missing that you think should be in there?
Click to expand...

You REALLY should split the old 2021/2022/2023 Paste Roundup articles into their own web pages and the new 2024 article into a seperate article along with the Article Forum Threads on them.

It's needlessly confusing seeing comments on the old article, and then looking at the new article & old article comments occupying the same thread.

bit_user said:
Thanks for the update! It's awesome to see Thermal Grizzly Kryosheet in there, though I'm puzzled by the inconsistent results. Was the same sheet reused? I think that might not the best idea. Or maybe the heatsink had some flatness/conformity issue that's better handled by pastes?

Glad to see Arctic MX-6 is finally included, though I'm a bit disappointed to see it improves over MX-4 by less than 1 degree. I will still probably use it, because I haven't found Arctic MX-4 to degrade at all, and I'm expecting no less from MX-6. I'm hardly doing LN2 cooling, here!
: D
Click to expand...
Most people buy Artic Cooling MX-6 for the 8-year Operational Life-Span.

Not the performance.

What I'm more surprised is how well that Noctua NT-H2 does and has a 5-Year Operational Life-Span.

Also, Toplamp came out of nowhere to beat everybody down and take #1/2 spots on the normal Thermal Paste rankings. That shocked me. Go Taiwanese Company!

COLGeek said:
Title corrected. Content remains.

There will ALWAYS be more products than any review can assess. Maybe these can be considered for a future review.
Click to expand...
Why is the DeepCool DM9 data listed in the 300 Watt Chart, but it doesn't even appear in the 253 watt chart at all?

Did somebody forget to test it there? Or did was the data not put into the chart?

---

On another note:
Can somebody add in 'Artic Silver 5' results just for reference to the new charts?
It'd be nice to see how far the Thermal Paste progression has come in the decades since 'Artic Silver 5' became famous. That used to be the "Standard Bearer" that all Thermal Pastes were measured by.
 
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warm thanks for tomsharware workers

no doubt mr POUL is world no 1 in depth reviewer
he is very very accure in deatail analyse,review

99% of youtubers, dont review deatail even hide bad thing (for example they hide lunar lake labtops very week cinebench r23 multicore results)
 
Could you add table with cost, which paste offer best performance for $?
It was mx-4 couple years back i believe.
 
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