masonbell•1mo agoProlific Poster

That $40 thermal paste trick I swore by for years was wrong

I used to be one of those guys who would only use Arctic Silver 5 for every build. A regular customer of mine, older guy named Dave who builds rigs for video editing, told me I was wasting my time. He said in his experience the difference between that and a basic paste like MX-4 was maybe 2 degrees under load. I didn't believe him so I tested it myself on two identical Ryzen 5 builds last month. Ran Cinebench on both, same case, same cooler, same room. The Arctic Silver machine was 1.5 degrees cooler on average. So yeah, he was pretty much right. Has anyone else found that the fancy pastes just aren't worth the extra money for normal builds?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_max1mo agoTop Commenter

The real hidden cost people ignore with high-end pastes is the curing time and application hassle. Most of them need a break-in period of days or weeks before they hit their best temps, while basic stuff like MX-4 works perfectly from the moment you install it. For someone who builds PCs for clients or swaps hardware often, those extra steps just aren't worth saving a degree or two in a month.

kim1911mo ago

Honestly you're so right about this. I tried Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut once and spent like 30 minutes making sure I did the pea method perfectly, then had to wait two weeks of daily gaming before it actually performed better than my old Arctic MX-4. Tbh that whole break-in thing is such a pain when you're just trying to build a rig and be done with it. Ngl I've gone back to MX-4 and never looked back because it works right out of the tube and I don't have to baby it. The extra hassle for maybe 1-2 degrees after a month just isn't worth it for most builds.