Thermal Paste Round-up: 85 Products Tested

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bit_user

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I had mostly the same thoughts.


Not years, right? I mean, I know some of the graphics card roundups seem a bit late, but years?
; )
 

bit_user

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Yeah, but it's nice to know exactly how much worse it is.

I would never use it on a desktop or server CPU or GPU, but you sometimes find it on RAM or some embedded chips.
 

xXxREBELOxXx

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Yeah I know what it is, just saw a small detail and decided to be anal about it lol.
 

: D

I was thinking more that he might have been retesting older cards for a new card's review. He was kind of vague on who else might have applied the thermal compound or how long it had been in place for, or even why he suspected it was that particular brand. I would have even more difficulty believing that those compounds would have been dried out and hard to remove from the GPU if it were only a matter of weeks or months since the application. I really suspect it was some other compound though.

If it were a question of short-term durability, that would be relatively easy to test. The same goes for performance before and after any potential burn-in. Such a test could be accelerated by adjusting the fans to increase temperatures higher than normal, and running constant stress tests. It wouldn't even need to be high-wattage hardware, since only the temperatures matter, and even a very low-end graphics card or processor could get quite hot given less than adequate cooling.
 


I'm sorry, but I don't think that you read my post very closely - MX-4 doesn't require burn-in, nor does it deteriorate appreciably over time. I think what's happening here is that you're confusing Arctic thermal paste, including MX-4, with Arctic Silver thermal paste, most likely Arctic Silver 5. Like I said, MX-4 doesn't have those issues; Arctic Silver 5, on the other hand, does... but is a completely different product from a completely separate company.




You are absolutely correct. Marketing claims should never be taken at face value.

However Arctic MX-4 has been an industry standard since the decline of Arctic Silver 5, and there are a TON of long-term reviews on it. MX-4 doesn't have a burn-in time. It does not have an issue with drying out over time. This has been shown time and time again through reviews and tests. There's a reason so many of us use MX-4, and it's not just personal preference. It has been shown to be one of the most consistent performers many years after application.




This isn't a case of fanboys getting butthurt, dude. This is a reaction to you claiming something that isn't true. You got your facts wrong, and from what I can tell, you inadvertently confused two different products from two different companies.

That's easy to do, especially when their names are so close. However... as somebody who's been working in the industry for 15 years and in particular, you should know better, or should at least check your facts when multiple people explain the mistake. More importantly, as someone who just wrote an article about the topic, you have a journalistic responsibility to own up to the fact that you accidentally messed something up and then to fix it.
 

FormatC

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I explained it in a few posts - compare my orginal and the translation, it sounds totally different. The translation is not from me.

And about MX-4 - I gave this thermal compound so often a try and I was never really satsified with this product. Please accept, that other people have other experiences and different meanings. In a lot of dicussions with SI and bigger vendors I also learned in the industry, that industrial standards are things like Dow Cornings TC-5026, solvent-free and safe for any pump-out, dry-out separation or migration and not such end-user products. The quality of this pastes differs too much from charge to charge to be something like a standard. ;)

And please read all my other answers here in this thread. And: I'm not your dude.
 


Okay, fine. If you've got nothing to do with the translation of this article, why are you defending it instead of pointing me towards somebody that I can point out the mistake to?

You can go ahead and not be satisfied with MX-4, I don't care. However, what you're doing is not being dissatisfied. What you're doing (either yourself or your translator, or considering what you've said in the comments, both) is spreading false information. That's not cool.

To clarify what I mean by, "industry standard," I'm not referring to large PC manufacturers who purchase thermal paste by the gallon. I'm not referring to server farms, who, again, wouldn't think of touching any commercial product. I'm referring to the pastes used by reviewers and media companies, and recommended to their audience. After all, if you consider industrial standards to be that significantly better than commercial products, why did this article feature none of them? You didn't even mention them as a better alternative if one could somehow get their hands on some.

As for not being my dude, what should I call you instead? Churlish? You're coming across as condescending and stubborn, while being rude to the people that you supposedly wrote the article for.

Please note that I directly quoted no fewer than your three most relevant posts in this thread, all of which were snotty and none of which in any way claimed that the error was your fault. The only thing that you said was a translation error was the word "cheap," which isn't a part of our discussion about claims that were or were not factual.

I'm pissing you off, I get that. However, you're insisting that everything in the English-translated article is correct and continuing to claim that Arctic MX-4 has certain issues, that you specifically called out in the article, when every piece of evidence is stacked against you.

Unless you want to claim that the translators inserted wild claims in a paragraph that you didn't write, then all you're doing right now is deflecting - you're refusing to actually address the issue. Again, it's pretty clear to me that you mistook Arctic Silver and Arctic (formally Arctic Cooling) for the same company. That's easy to do, and really, it's not that big of a deal, except that you're refusing to own up to your mistake and fix the article. (Or direct the translators to do so.)
 

FormatC

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To say it shortly:
I'm sitting here to do all this measuring for Threadripper, Vega and other things, writing under pressure reviews and handle a complete location of Tom's Hardware in Germany. I have no time to celebrate any nitpicking and such endless discussions about a single thermal paste, a few terms in a translation or something else. I have to deliver at least two reviews per week and I own a lab with a lot of running projects (product development and quality management). I have to set priorities and after all this AMD torture I'm sure to find a minute to jump over the text.
 
Okay. I don't quite know what that means, I'm sorry. Does "I'm sure to find a minute to jump over the text," mean you'll go back and edit the article? If so, thank you.

If not, then I appreciate that you're busy, but can't help but be frustrated with Tom's Hardware for this. My boss would have my head if I made a factual slip in content that went up and then attempted to avoid and deny it.
 
Okay. Thank you, I really do appreciate it.

There are a LOT of things that new builders have to research, and confronting them with information pulling in different directions is likely to result in fewer new builders, which I think we can all agree isn't our goal.
 

bit_user

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@DarkSable: you've made your case. If you're not satisfied with his edits, I suggest you either write a nice letter to the editor(s) inquiring about evidence supporting Igor's statements or you drop it. We can't really insist he change or recant his position, nor should we try.

As much as we might disagree with the content of some articles, we should be thankful (and not abusive), when the authors take the time to interact with us on the forums.
 


I... what?

I thanked him for making the change and explained why it mattered so much to me.

I'm sorry if my position came across as abusive. I was being much more forceful than I normally would, because I saw the issue as a factual mistake and became frustrated with the resistance. Granted, that's no excuse for getting that worked up, but I would imagine that everybody on the internet can at least empathize with that sort of frustration.
 

Zaporro

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Is there a "Show all" button?? I hate to click 20+ times to load next page where going over page content takes me half of minute, its so annoying.
 
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