Noctua NT-H1 vs Arctic Cooling MX-4

abdullah_mag

Honorable
Aug 1, 2012
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10,680
Hello everyone

I recently posted a thread asking about the best thermal pastes to use on my CPU (which now i'm considering for the GPU as well), and i have come to the conclusion that the Noctua NT-H1 and the Arctic Cooling MX-4 are the most suited for me, because they are both relatively inexpensive, come in a decent amount, are not electrically conductive, and are easy to use.

However i'm a bit torn between which one to get, i know the differences are slim, but if i'm going to do this only once every year, i may as well be thorough.

So, which of the two offer the better performance for an air cooled laptop (Alienware M17x R4, CPU: 3720QM, GPU: GTX 675m), and is the most forgiving for rookie mistakes?

note: i have also considered Prolimatech PK3 which is the better performing one, but i am not quite certain about its electrical conductivity properties, and it also costs more dollars per gram (not to mention it comes in only 1.5gms as min amount)
 
Solution
Ive used arctice mx 4 on my. 4690k woth hyper 212x turbo and my 970. loving it so far on full load after my overclock on my 970 i used to get 83 degrees max but now its 79 degrees max and i easily got my cpu to 4.5 ghz with maximum degrees 73 and my ambient temps arent cold at all. The packaging and ease of use was great. Idk about nh but noctua makes great heatsinks so im guessing there thermal paste also should be good quality
I have been very pleased with the MX-4, I used it on both my desktop GPU's and in my laptop. The GPU's are running ~10c cooler and the laptop runs about 20c cooler (laptop is a Inspiron 1720 and had the original paste form 2008). I just used the MX-4 on my brothers computer when we upgraded his CPU and replaced the thermal paste on his Radeon 5770.

I can't speak to the others, but the MX-4 is very easy to use and works great. When I was looking into what to get, I noticed that overall, there really isn't a lot of difference these days beween the pastes, but the MX-4 was a great price.

Knowing all the uses I had for it, I bought the big tube:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186056&cm_re=mx-4-_-35-186-056-_-Product
and still have a good amount left.
 
Ive used arctice mx 4 on my. 4690k woth hyper 212x turbo and my 970. loving it so far on full load after my overclock on my 970 i used to get 83 degrees max but now its 79 degrees max and i easily got my cpu to 4.5 ghz with maximum degrees 73 and my ambient temps arent cold at all. The packaging and ease of use was great. Idk about nh but noctua makes great heatsinks so im guessing there thermal paste also should be good quality
 
Solution