Question Thermal paste

[KylerZ]

Hi which one is the best for Ryzen 5600x
Arctic mx-4
Cooler master master gel pro V2

Cooler master is cheaper here both are 4 grams

 

[boju]

They're all about the same, 1~2° difference. I use Noctua nt h1 since it comes with their coolers. It's more the matter of how you apply it really, not too thick or thin and covering the entire ihs without excess spread over the edges. I spread manually with glad wrap on finger leaving a millimetre or two from edge to compensate excess, that's from a small pea drop worth.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

The guy above is client. I like Arctic mx4 myself. Except I don’t use a glad wrap on my finger usually lol, maybe I should. But I don’t like doing a glob or an x etc I like knowing I got an even spread. Been doing it that way for years and always works fine so no reason to change.

 

[boju]

Glad wrap so not to contaminate with skin oil. Spreading around is easy and i too prefer it that way. Blob or whatever in the middle requires perfect alignment with cooler, if just ever so slightly off won't spread in all directions evenly.

And i prefer the whole ihs + paste for heat transfer make full contact to entire heatsink surface, not just a flattened splat where even a little part of the heatsink could be missed, every little bit helps.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Also back in the day we used Arctic silver 5 which is conductive. So that’s another reason for a spread method so you knew you weren’t going onto other parts.

 

[boju]

Also back in the day we used Arctic silver 5 which is conductive. So that’s another reason for a spread method so you knew you weren’t going onto other parts.

That would be. Is Arctic still conductive these days? Noctua paste isn't, would think for competitive reasons they'd remodel not requiring conductive materials, not sure about Cooler Master op asked about.

 

[KylerZ]

Okay I will go for arctic since it's very popular

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I think they are 2 separate companies. I think Arctic silver is the place that makes Arctic silver 5. Amazon listings say they use silver particles so i would assume that one is still.

A listing on Amazon says mx4 is non conductive. So especially if the op is a newb, opt for that. And when you apply it on a cpu, a small dot like a grain of rice is about all you need. Don’t slather the stuff on there. Too much and you can actually have higher temps. You want just a thin layer to give a seal from the heatsink to the cpu.

 

[boju]

Okay I will go for arctic since it's very popular

It is but so is Noctua nt h1 and also it is better.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Haven't used the noctua, so it may very well be better. I personally just got used to arctic mx4 and I just stick with it but it depends what you like.

 

[boju]

Have used Noctua paste since getting their coolers. First unit was for Nehalem cpu which the design was similar to ud12a by looks, i forget the actual model name. D14 next for i7 2600k then D15 currently for main 11700k sys. Then a couple of ud12a's for a sim room i have two rigs built for racing. App used for thermal testing pretty much straight after being built has always been ibt and so far with every system has been low 80s.

 

[Satan-IR]

I'd use the Noctua one.