Thermal paste/pad
Thermal paste/pad
Hello everyone, I just set up my first rig with a Ryzen 5 3600 and a CM Hyper 212 Turbo. The idle temps were a bit high at around 50-60°C, and under load (with AIDA64) it didn’t exceed 80°C. I’m considering switching to a different thermal paste instead of the one included. I’m looking into Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut or MX4, which are roughly a dollar apart—about 1 USD each. One gram for Grizzly and 4 grams for MX4. I don’t think MX4 comes in a 1-gram version. I also don’t need much paste for just one application and might be able to repaste the GPU later. Regarding the CPU, I’m worried about applying too little paste, so a thermal pad like Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut seems like a safe choice. But how will it perform against these high-end coolers? How will it handle any dents or damage?
Get ready for the discussions by confirming your cooler setup and keeping an eye on temperatures during stress tests. Ensure XMP/CDP is enabled.
If you're unfamiliar with this setup, consider going with MX4. I've used NT-H1 for a long time and it performed well. Definitely avoid liquid metal—it's reserved for advanced enthusiasts—and professionals warn against it because of the potential for serious issues. A better option might be an IC Graphite thermal pad; they are available in 30 x 30mm or 40 x 40mm sizes. I recently purchased one and the cooling performance was exceptional, offering much faster heat dissipation than before.
Thanks! I followed the guidelines precisely and ran tests with AIDA64 and cinebench R20. The result was around 3150, which is significantly lower than the ~3600+ others are achieving. Yes, I have xmp enabled at 3200Mhz in the BIOS. Regarding the extra 3 grams—since I’m not planning to build more computers, I’m unsure how to utilize it. Also, I didn’t reference liquid metals in my post; I believe you mixed up Carbonaut and Conductonaut. Carbonaut functions as a thermal pad similar to the IC Graphite pad.
Minor oversight. Each time I encounter Thermal Grizzly, it seems to refer to the coolant system. Whatever.
Update on this, I bought the MX 4 and used it, the temperature did not change so I guess its a cooler thing. I initially wanted to use a X pattern for the most coverage but when I first squeezed I kinda got a little bit too much on it, so I ended up using the spread method by taking a spreader and spreading the paste on the cpu. Edit: tho the cinebench score did increase a little to ~3220.
The temperatures were good initially. The CPU was throttling to 95°C, and the temperature reached 110°C during the test. Being within the safe range didn’t save your time or money. Apologies for sharing this info.