Best thermal paste

[eeii]

MX4 was not great for a Vega64 repaste. Although to be fair that GPU does get silly hot. I found the noctua paste to be very good.

 

[Rroff]

MX4 was not great for a Vega64 repaste. Although to be fair that GPU does get silly hot. I found the noctua paste to be very good.

For large surface areas like GPUs you need a different type of paste really - ideally something designed for manually spreading.

IIRC when I was testing awhile back MX-2 was actually one of the better ones for GPUs out of what I had available like AS5 and MX-4, etc.

 

[von Humboldt]

I would be interested in knowing which pastes I should be looking at for longevity? I tend not to swap out parts too often, so a paste that will be effective for several years is what I'm after!

Any thoughts on this, or am I overthinking it (which would be rare for me actually lol)?

 

[Rroff]

Any thoughts on this, or am I overthinking it (which would be rare for me actually lol)?

Personally I've never had any problems with longevity with anything other than generic pastes which come bundled with some hardware and earlier batches of Thermal Grizzly stuff (though supposedly that has been fixed). AS5, MX-4, etc. has held up for like a decade plus in some applications for me when applied properly.

 

[Gray2233]

Personally I've never had any problems with longevity with anything other than generic pastes which come bundled with some hardware and earlier batches of Thermal Grizzly stuff (though supposedly that has been fixed). AS5, MX-4, etc. has held up for like a decade plus in some applications for me when applied properly.

Likewise. I know people that religiously tear down their PC's to repaste/clean every few months. Outside of perhaps enjoying the process, it's an utterly pointless exercise with 95% of thermal pastes/use cases, at worst they're actually increasing the chances of something going wrong with needless faff.

Blast your rig with some air once in awhile and monitor temps, it's rare that paste longevity will be a problem.

 

[Rroff]

I know people that religiously tear down their PC's to repaste/clean every few months. Outside of perhaps enjoying the process, it's an utterly pointless exercise with 95% of thermal pastes, at worst they're actually increasing the chances of something going wrong with needless faff.

Sometimes that is due to people persisting in using incorrect/sub-standard application methods - even when it might not always impact performance it can impact lifespan - incorrect hand spreading of AS5 for example can result in it needing to be reapplied every couple of years or so.

I could look it up but IIRC correctly applied MX-4 should on average last at least 7 years or something with no performance degradation (EDIT: 8 years shelf life, 7 years applied).

 

[Gray2233]

Sometimes that is due to people persisting in using incorrect/sub-standard application methods - even when it might not always impact performance it can impact lifespan - incorrect hand spreading of AS5 for example can result in it needing to be reapplied every couple of years or so.

I could look it up but IIRC correctly applied MX-4 should on average last at least 7 years or something with no performance degradation.

I have MX-4 on a few things running on close to 5 years with zero issues, it's hard to go wrong with in my experience.

I think a lot of people are of the mindset that "general maintenance = good" but take it a step too far. I've lost count of the number of people that come to forums (this one included) to complain about things going wrong after a repaste, and when questioned they usually had no reason to have done one other than the idea it was necessary just in case.