Does the brand and the type of thermal grease have an impact on the cooling. Which brand do u recomend?
Prolimatech's grease. I can't remember off the top of my head the exact name, but i heard it's pretty damned good. That or AS5.
Is there anything i shud consider when buying thermal grease such as heat conductivity etc? And are these good http://cgi.ebay.com/1-0g-Thermal-Gr...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item439b8a1321 Also is arctic silver 5 a good thermal grease. if not any reomendations?
AS5's pretty much the forum standard. You certainly won't go wrong with it (though I used the stuff Noctua supplied with my heatsink myself, but they're similar).
As always, the results, comments, science etc given by the manufacturers themselves cannot be followed as accurate and balanced: the only way to know is a test (ideally double blind, but any test will do). There are a number on the net, which show that some TIMs are much better/worse than others. Arctic Silver 5 comes near the top, Shin Etsu is rarer but possibly better. Check out something like this . . . http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=150&Itemid=62&limit=1&limitstart=13
MX-3 here aswell, i actually went to get MX-2 at the time, but saw the new MX-3 and got suckered in, glad by it tbh. MX-2 was epic for its price as AS5 has been a tad expensive. One funny thing is that i used plain white silicon based thermal grease for a long time big 100g tube of the stuff for £1.50, it performed extremely well just as good as my MX-2. Mind you I have lapped surfaces so TIM isn't a massive influence on my temps. please before you ask about lapping, go google it! or better yet check this out
I'm also using MX-3, it's definitely better than MX-2 by all accounts, which itself was one of the best thermal compounds around at the time and rivaled AS5, which I wouldn't really say is the 'standard'. Unfortunately decent benchmarks are hard to come by when it comes to TIM.
MX 3 is useful because it doesnt have a cure time - so it lets you evaluate the differences immediately instead of having to put your system under load for x number of hours.
You could get a smoker to lick the bottom of your heatsink, and stick it on. The tar in there saliva would act like a TIM! lol! Lick it N stick it! hahahahahaha
I've heard that Jam works pretty well, preferably strawberry flavour. I'll stick with MX-3 or AS5. Nominal difference in performance IMO.
Arctic silver is said to be pretty good.. But as always : too much of anything is never a good thing. Less is more kinda.. Too much paste and it will not work very well. So brand is not the only factor in making a good thermal connection. I always put a small blob on the middle of the cpu surface and smear it out a little, put on the sink without fastening but putting a little pressure on it, pull the sink off again to see if the blob has spread evenly but thin all over the cpu.. if so put on the sink and fasten tight. If not add more.. If the grease comes out at all ends you have definiteley used too much . Greeetz Apex
Just to remind everyone, "x is better than y because it cools by 2degrees more than y" is better than "x is best because I use x"
Btw, I'd stay clear of Coollaboratory Liquid Pro. As amazing as it is at cooling (see excellent graph posted above), I noticed three things when I used it: 1. If any of it doesn't make perfect contact with both surfaces, it seems to burn with oxygen and form a horrible black layer of soot 2. It's strongly cohesive so it forms balls like liquid mercury, so it's an absolute bugger to spread 3. The balls don't attach to the surface well so they roll around, killing my first 4870X2 4. Normal TIM cleaner like ArctiClean or Isopronanol doesn't touch it. I accept of course that other more learne'd user may have had a better experience
