Question I need recommendations for CPU Thermal Paste ?

[MasterYoda327]

I plan to build a new mid-range gaming PC in the near future. I will go with AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU. I haven't selected a CPU cooler because I haven't decided on a motherboard yet. If it helps, I plan to go with either an Nvidia RTX 5070/5070 Ti or Radeon RX 9070/9070 XT GPU and plan to game at 1440p (possibly 4K if GPU is capable), do some YouTube content creation and some basic drone video editing (just incase, drone is 4K capable). I do not plan to overclock. I have researched CPU thermal pastes, but I am not familiar with all of the ingredients involved with the pastes. The most commonly mentioned thermal pastes from my research are listed below:


• Arctic
o Arctic MX-6
• Noctua
o Noctua NT-H2
• Thermal Grizzly
o Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut
• Corsair
o Corsair XTM70
• Thermalright
o Thermalright TF9

Would any of these pastes meet my needs? I am open to suggestions and reliable alternatives.

Thanks.

 

[geofelt]

Most coolers will come with a tube of paste suitable for several re-applications.
Check the list of box contents.
Noctua paste is good, I have used them for a very long time.
Differences are minimal.

 

[CountMike]

Thermal Grizzly has great pastes for all kinds of applications. Decide on cooler first but real difference in performance between best and worst paste is within few degrees.

 

[MasterYoda327]

Thanks. I will let you guys know when I have selected a CPU cooler.

 

[SydneyAngel]

Artic Silver 5 forever

 

[LordVile]

Wouldn’t bother, just use what’s on your cooler first and get some more if you remove it later down the line.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Thermal Paste is thermal paste as long as it's not cheap junk. You'll usually see fractions of a degree variance and that can even flip depending on application and other variables.

Stay away from Thermal Grizzly. Good benchmarking, not long term. It dries Out faster and also has abrasives that have scratched my IHS and plate the few times I tried


My go to is ALWAYS Noctua NH2 now.

 

[USAFRet]

Whatever is already on the CPU cooler is fine.

 

[CountMike]

Thermal Paste is thermal paste as long as it's not cheap junk. You'll usually see fractions of a degree variance and that can even flip depending on application and other variables.

Stay away from Thermal Grizzly. Good benchmarking, not long term. It dries Out faster and also has abrasives that have scratched my IHS and plate the few times I tried


My go to is ALWAYS Noctua NH2 now.

Thermal Grizzly has improved immensely last few of years and NH2 is now NH3, better adhesion but very thick.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Thermal Grizzly has improved immensely last few of years and NH2 is now NH3, better adhesion but very thick.

Tried their paste one time and wasn’t a fan of the cost and how hard it seemed to spread.

I used to always use Arctic silver, the last few years I’ve been rolling with Arctic Mx-4 which has been pretty decent. But most pastes I find are generally decent

 

[CountMike]

Tried their paste one time and wasn’t a fan of the cost and how hard it seemed to spread.

I used to always use Arctic silver, the last few years I’ve been rolling with Arctic Mx-4 which has been pretty decent. But most pastes I find are generally decent

Arctic Mx-6 is now one of best. Using it just now because it came with my Liquid Freezer III 360, After a year I had to remove cooler temporally and there was no drying or pump out like with NH-2. TG Hydronaut I used before and now on another PC. it's there for at least 2 years under prolonged hot conditions and no loss.

 

[beyondlogic]

I plan to build a new mid-range gaming PC in the near future. I will go with AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU. I haven't selected a CPU cooler because I haven't decided on a motherboard yet. If it helps, I plan to go with either an Nvidia RTX 5070/5070 Ti or Radeon RX 9070/9070 XT GPU and plan to game at 1440p (possibly 4K if GPU is capable), do some YouTube content creation and some basic drone video editing (just incase, drone is 4K capable). I do not plan to overclock. I have researched CPU thermal pastes, but I am not familiar with all of the ingredients involved with the pastes. The most commonly mentioned thermal pastes from my research are listed below:


• Arctic
o Arctic MX-6
• Noctua
o Noctua NT-H2
• Thermal Grizzly
o Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut
• Corsair
o Corsair XTM70
• Thermalright
o Thermalright TF9

Would any of these pastes meet my needs? I am open to suggestions and reliable alternatives.

Thanks.

i have used thermalright tf9 its ok ive used it on a few projects however after about 3 years i had performance issues so ive replaced it.

arctic mx6 is quite thick and not very spreadable but because the ihs is smaller then am4 i would say its ok just do the dot cake method that they suggest ( its not suggested to spread.)

thermal paste kryonaut is ok ( its not a gpu paste it cant take the wild temp swings).

tfx thermalright is what i use though it needs to be put in a zip lock bag in a cup of boiling water for about 3 minutes before you can actually spread it successfully.
however its a solid paste and worth hassle does have consistancy of chewing gum though at first. once heated a bit its much easier to spread.

compared to mx6 i got 3-5 degrees diffrence. and found it has less temp swings.

 

[bill001g]

As others have stated just use what ever comes with the cooler and worry about it later if you have some actual issue.

The biggest thing to remember is even though you might see some difference in temperature in some benchmark it mostly doesn't matter. There is not direct relationship between the temperature and the performance. You do not get xxx% clock speed improvement for every xxx degree of temperature drop. CPU have a range of temperature they run at their optimum performance. As long as you are in this range the actual temperature number does not matter. In general as long as the CPU does not get hot enough to reduce its clocks it all doesn't matter.

Now maybe if you were overclocking it might be different. When you overclock you are changing the optimum temperature range. This is not well documented even though I suspect amd and intel have the data. Also when you overclock a cpu the minor differences between different samples of the same cpu model likely also affect these numbers.

In the end I would say the brand of thermal paste is way down on the list of things that are important for cooling. The actual cooler and the case you put it in likely affect the temperature more. But again be very careful about chasing numbers that do not directly impact you use of the machine.