New build components arriving next week, and I was just checking I had all I needed. In my box of bits in the loft, I found a tube of Arctic Silver II, I squirted a bit out and it looks OK. It's probably 7 years old, anyone have any thoughts if it's still viable?
fine - used old stuff myself when I changed my cpu in my 1156 machine - no issues. If it spreads sensibly and hasn't gone grainy or on the other extreme split into a thin liquid and thicker goop then you're fine.
duplicate post - please delete
When I’ve used older stuff, initially you get some oily stuff coming out so make sure to discard that first. Does make you wonder what has separated and what effect that might have though.
if you apply it and your temps are ok then what's the issue?! You can even use toothpaste. It's rubbish by comparison, but it still works. It all comes down to are you happy with the temps.
I'm with the others on this, I've used some stuff (granted it was MX2 rather than AS5) many years old and if there is a difference, I've not noticed it. Maybe if you're chasing the last degree for some OC world record attempt it might make a difference, but for most people I imagine avoiding unnecessary wastage is the bigger concern.
I used some of this stuff in a pinch last year on a gpu for my bother, still in use now but temps aren't fantastic but too lazy to change it.
what CPU and what temps?Originally Posted by neojay
Was a gpu a r9 290... Granted not the coolest running gpu but think some mx4 would decrease the current idle temp of 65c hahaha
Mx4 isn't that good and why were you playing around with the cooler on a 290?
Toothpaste works great - better than arctic silver.. until it dries out
http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm
Not really ventured away from mx4, what can you recommend?. He had a blower type cooler which died so had to be replaced, managed to salvage a dual fan cooler off another card.
Arctic silver5 was for many years the bees knees. Noctua NH2 isn't bad in tests. Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut performs best without the move to any liquid metal TIM (I would personally steer clear of LM). Note with Kryonaut there were some production issues in 2018 with batches sold that had metal grains that were too large. These were abrasive and caused a lot of damage to CPU lid and heatsink base. Noone knows if it's still in circulation because TG don't print batch numbers and couldn't be bothered to change their packaging even once the production issues were resolved so it's a basically a bit of a lottery. Annoyignly I found this out after I'd put it on my Ryzen so just hoping it's all ok when I come to take it off as nothing I can do about it now.
Unless you really care about the aesthetics of the surfaces I wouldn't worry about it - I wouldn't expect it to cause any lasting problems in terms of performance.
I've used MX2 for ages now and never had an issue with it - it's cheap, easy to use and lasts ages, and imagine MX4 would if anything be better. These pastes have an advantage over metallic pastes of not being conductive or capacitive, so aren't as much of a worry if they end up on components - especially important if you're dealing with bare die GPUs.
The controlled, objective tests between standard, decent quality thermal pastes I've seen show differences to be pretty minor and within testing error margins even though you get massive fanboys of one brand or another, and this reflects my own experience - if you're having thermal problems it's unlikely to be anything to do with the paste unless it's been applied incorrectly or the heatsink mounted incorrectly.
@neojay: 65C does seem high for idle - is the heatsink free of dust, and what are temps like under load? Application tends to be more critical with bare dies than with heatspreaders.
I get the strong impression from the various vids that if you get the paste wrong it's detrimental to heat conduction and therefore cooling. Also, if there are surface imperfections it's supposed to fill the spaces and exclude the notoriously insulating air pockets.
However, there never seems to be any right way to apply it - a blob in the middle, one or a few parallel lines, an even coating like you're buttering toast, a little or a lot. Have none showing round the edges or have it squeezed out all the way around. What's right, if anything?
Yeah over-applying is a big one to avoid. Thermal paste does not conduct as well as metal so you ideally want to use as little as possible to fill those air gaps - a thicker layer will only serve to reduce the overall conductivity.
In many cases the method isn't quite as critical as you may be led to believe by many videos/forum posts. Personally, with CPUs (where there's a heatspreader) a dot/line in the middle sized to spread and cover most of the IHS is what I aim for. With something like Ryzen where there are multiple dies under the heatspreader I'd be paying extra attention to ensure they were covered but given the IHS is copper I wouldn't expect it to make a massive difference if you didn't manage that perfectly.
Manually spreading will often result in over-applying and potentially air bubbles.
When using heatsinks with exposed heatpipes, it's important to make sure the paste is going to actually contact all of the heatpipes and not just seep into the gaps between them - in that case I'd make sure the line goes across all of the heatpipes. Some are more level than others so this would be less of an issue.
It's a bit different with bare dies, as is the case in many/most GPUs nowadays - in this case you want to be sure you're covering the whole die with a thin layer of paste one way or another as silicon doesn't conduct heat as well as a nice copper heatspreader, and you don't want to end up with hot-spots on the die if you can help it. Where I've done this, I'd rather have a bit squeezed out over the edges than have not applied enough to cover it.
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