The modus operandi has been the same: spread out a grain of rice with thermal paste, mount a heatsink, leave it on for 20 minutes at rest, Prime95 for 10 minutes, turn off the computer for 10 minutes and, with this, the paste is settled. Then we turn on the PC again and stress the processor with Prime95 for 10 minutes, capturing the maximum temperature that any of the cores has had. The wipe is made of 100% Limonene extracted from citrus essential oil. This would mean that these wipes don’t have alcohol or benzenes as this substance is used in industrial applications for cleaning as it is effective and gentle on metals and alloys. Thermal compounds might always be compared and debated over, but the simple fact remains: PC system building needs thermal compounds to effectively dissipate thermal loads. Without them, our beloved gaming and content-producing machines would struggle to keep components cool during heated frag sessions, heavy workstation computations, or just simply browsing the web.

Now yes, we are going to proceed to apply the thermal paste on the processor, in this case on a Core i7-13700K from intel. The way to apply it is the one that we personally have always used and it has given us the best results; You already know that there are many theories about what is the best method to apply thermal paste, but in our experience the one that has given us the best result has always been to apply thermal paste with the size of a grain of rice and spread it with a card or similar. However, there is a catch to it. These wipes have very strong and unpleasant smell that doesn’t go away instantly. ARCTIC is not adding or mixing any artificial flavor for the fragrance to alter this smell. Each wipe is 115x115mm. In contrast, traditional thermal paste compounds are relatively simple for every experience level. Most, but not all, traditional pastes are electrically non-conductive. As shown in the slides above, the outcome of the different testing scenarios resulted in some interesting comparisons among the compounds. We’ll look at the overall thermal load averages for each, as well as the relative performance value of each in terms of price-per-gram. Liquid metal compounds make their way to the top of the temperature chart with slightly cooler values than the traditional pastes. Interestingly, the difference between the top and bottom of this chart is less than 4C.

Artic's Silver series is extremely popular among enthusiasts. The Silver series has also been around for quite some time now and the company has managed to keep it relevant in the space by adding newer, better variants to match the current standards. The Arctic Silver 5 is currently one of the most popular thermal paste solutions on the market. It's a high-density polysynthetic silver compound that's known to be very effective in a variety of builds. It contains micronized silver and several other thermally conductive ceramic particles to offer a high level of performance and stability. MX Cleaner is a 100% biodegradable wipe to clean the surface of CPU and other chips for easy and complete removal of the thermal paste and its residue. Each wipe is provided in a separate sealed container to ensure a longer shelf life. ARCTIC has mentioned that this thermal paste is suitable for many applications like direct die applications, graphics cards, console chips, and laptop chips. the wipes MX Cleaner To remove thermal paste they come in individual sachets, and be careful because they are wet wipes that have a very, very strong smell of disinfectant. We have tested them, and of course we recommend using them to remove the previous thermal paste naturally, without pressing too much and folding the wipe so that you always wipe it with a clean part, but once that is done, we recommend wiping it down a bit. toilet paper to the surface to remove the remains of the disinfectant liquid that may remain. The application of the MX-6 is particularly easy thanks to its high viscosity, which also makes it particularly suitable for direct-die applications, which occur, for example, with graphics cards or console processor GPUs.

Why should you buy this: It is one of the best-performing pastes with excellent thermal conductivity.On top of that, liquid metals can't be used with aluminum heat sinks since the Gallium in them reacts with aluminum. That's not really an issue since most heat sinks (remember, not all) are made of copper which is nonreactive with the liquid metal. That being said, the high risk pays off in meaningful ways the liquid metal provides up to 73 W/(mK) thermal conductivity. It's much higher than the 0.5-12.5 W/(mK) thermal conductivity provided by conventional thermal pastes. We're also putting a new take on an old approach to the test — thermal pads. These pads can be used as TIM and come as a single sheet you simply apply to your heatsink, with Thermaltake's Heilos Pad being the first new thermal pad entrant to see our test bed in the coming weeks.

Corsair Commander Pro, 100%/50% PWM Speed profiles (liquid cooling pump always @100%, if applicable) Noctua's NT-H1 is a super-reliable paste that has been around for years. It is regarded as one of the best with more than 150 awards and recommendations, and it's one of the best options for building or repairing computers, especially for amateurs who may not yet have a lot of experience with thermal pastes but are confident enough to use them. The NT-H1 formula also gets excellent marks for usability, with an easy-to-apply consistency. It's easy to clean when dry and is designed to not corrode. We tested each thermal paste with a low-tension air cooler mount, high-tension air cooler mount, and a high-tension AIO liquid cooler mount. Each application was given a 1-hour burn-in using Prime95 with ten load and cooling cycles over the course of the hour; six minutes each with a ten-second cool-down between. Each testing load session was then executed for a one-hour load period, again using Prime95. Please note that not every run of the stress test may yield the same result. This could well be due to many factors like mounting pressure, thermal paste application, and varying ambient temperature. Not to mention the silicon differences even among the same category of chips. Hence, it is pertinent to mention the testing methodology along with the specifics. Each time the even spread of the thermal paste was verified and where the thermal paste spread was not even or gives the impression of a tear or a poor application, the result was dropped and the new test with correct spread was repeated. This is done to ensure the validity of the data. For the air cooling low- and high-tension tests, we used a large Noctua NH-D15 air cooler. We created the low tension mount environment by torquing the mounting screws to 1.13 Nm (10 in/lbs).Arctic's MX-5 did not replace the MX-4 and the two pastes continued to co-exist up until recently, even though the new one often performed better than its predecessor. By contrast, the MX-6 actually replaces the MX-5. For a compound that costs less than half as much as leading competitors , Phobya's Liquid Metal Compound LM offers impressive performance, often besting the the CoolLaboratory Liquid Pro or Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut in our tests. The XTM50 paste by itself has low viscosity, so can also just use the 'Dot method' to apply the paste and let the mounting pressure do its thing. But if you're too worried about applying using that method, then the bundled stencil and spreader make it very easy to get things done. In theory, you can use any application method for a compound with low viscosity, but the stencil makes it that much easier to apply. It's for new builders who don't necessarily have the technical know-how of properly applying thermal paste and how improper application can have a lasting impact on the overall performance of the CPU.

As you can see, the Arctic MX-6 is the winner of this comparison, taking 0.7 degrees from the excellent Noctua NT-H2 and 1.9 degrees Celsius from the CORSAIR TM30, which is not bad thermal paste either. Of course, in terms of performance, it seems that Arctic has done an excellent job again. In the following graph you can see the result, expressed in Delta temperature, that is, measured temperature minus ambient temperature, so that even if the ambient temperature varies, the comparison is still reliable. PC was powered off for a minimum of 30 minutes after a stress test run. This would allow the completion of the thermal cycle with hot and cold runs giving the thermal paste some time to reach its near-optimal condition. Here is a statement from ARCTIC about MX-6. “With its improved composition, the ARCTIC MX-6 has a measurably lower thermal resistance than the MX-4. The basis for calculation is the temperature difference between the cooler base and the heat source (in C) in relation to the applied heat load (in W), which also results in the unit C/W. The higher the thermal resistance, the worse the heat can be transferred through the TIM layer. Thermal insulators, as an example, therefore always have a particularly high thermal resistance, while thermal interface materials usually have a particularly low one.”The above picture shows a thermal paste. This paste is not easy to spread in my opinion unlike MX-5 or even Noctua NT-H1.