Introduction Today I am going to be reviewing some thermal paste and thermal paste cleaner/remover by the cooling company Phobya. According to the packaging for the HeGrease it states that it was "created for extreme users on (the) highest level the HeGrease Extreme thermal compound (3.5G) achieves the best heat conductivity from your CPU, VGA or even chipset to your cooler." This is a very bold claim so I'm going to see if it lives up to this statement by testing the compound on an Intel i5-650 and a nVidia GTX470 reference card by PNY. I will also be checking out Phobya's CPU and GPU cleaner which is something I am very new to. Previously I've always struggled to remove old thermal compound from my chips because it has often become dried on so I always end up with a bit of left over residue, which of course is no good for temperatures! Packaging As you can see below, Phobya have opted for typical thermal paste packaging clean and simple. The thermal compound comes with the 3.5G tube (Which is much preferred to the little sachets you often get with new CPU coolers etc) and a little spatula to spread the paste onto your chosen chip. For this review, I ended up using the pea method on the CPU and the cross method on the GPU because I found this particular spatula a nightmare to use, it was too flimsy and thin so I found that it didn't spread the compound very well at all. I had a similar spreader come with some Akasa thermal compound I used a couple of years back which was much bigger and studier and I found that was the perfect spreader for the job. The thermal compound cleaner packaging is just a simple plastic envelope with a cardboard top holding it together. As picky as this may sound, I would suggest that Phobya opted for a similar packaging design as the compound they use because my cleaner had leaked, possibly during postage causing the packaging to be very wet and the label on the bottle had faded slightly. The test setup The system that I am going to be using for this review comprises of: Intel i5-650 3.2Ghz Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600mhz/PC3-12800 nVidia GTX470 1280mb Reference Card (PNY) MSI P55-GD80 (1156 Board) Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB/Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB Coolermaster RC-690 Modded Apply the thermal compound - GPU Before I began I ran a few benchmarks to get the thermal compound up to temperate for easier removal. The nVidia GTX470 in my system used stock thermal compound and as many of you may already know, GPU manufacturers tend to go a little bit crazy when it comes to putting on thermal compound so I thought this would be a good test. Removed the GPU from the system Remove the outer plastic cover off the GPU by pressing in the clips (harder than you think) Give the heatsink a good dust out and remove it by removing the required screws and surprisingly there wasn't that much compound on the GPU itself but I was left with the usual staining. What a mess! Wipe most of the excess compound off with kitchen roll/paper towel first. Then you are left with this staining which can be very hard to remove, so I applied a generous amount of the compound cleaner and was amazed at the result It literally just wipes off clean. I reapplied the thermal compound in a cross shape because of the size of the die on this GPU. I wanted to be sure that the entire die was covered. (Looks more than it is in the photo ) Applying the thermal compound - CPU Thanks to my CPU cooler I didn't have to remove the motherboard from the case but I would strongly suggest that if you don't have to do that in your system that you at least lie the case down on it's side to make putting the cooler back in place a little easier. Remember - Try not to place the cooler down on to the CPU (with new paste on) and then attempt to re-position it and lift it on and off several times as this causes air to get into the paste and you will not have the best thermal conductivity giving you bad temperatures. Remove the CPU cooler Again, wipe off the excess compound and then use a small amount of the cleaner making sure you don't spill it all over your fancy motherboard to remove the remaining compound. It really is amazing how good Phobya's compound cleaner is, this cooler looks brand new after using it to remove the compound left on there! Apply a pea sized amount into the center of the heatsink or CPU (I prefer the heatsink but it's personal preference) and re-position the cooler onto the CPU making sure once you place it fully down you don't remove it unless you want to remove the paste to avoid getting any air in it! Results Before I changed the thermal compound I ran a few benchmarks to give me some results to compare to. On my CPU I was using Arctic Silver 5 and on the GPU it was using nVidia's stock compound. The benchmarks I ran were Heaven DX11, 3D Mark 11 (trial) and played a 30 minute game of Battlefield 3. Idle test. The CPU temperatures on Core#0 and Core#1 are the same at 22c. To gain the idle reading I left the computer running just the necessary programs and HWMonitor for 30 minutes before taking a reading. I did this three times and then took the best result. The GPU is idling at 47c as a base run for the idle test. After changing the thermal compound to Phobya HeGrease Extreme the idle temperatures where as follows: The CPU temperature had increased from 22c over both cores to 24c and 25c. An increase of 2c-3c not what I was expecting considering the claims made on the packaging of the compound. The GPU temperatures were much better though, here we see a drop of 4c taking it down to 44c idle. Heaven Benchmark - Before change The CPU temperatures come in at 44c and 43c which I didn't think was too bad for such an intensive benchmark. The GPU temperature had increased to 89c using the stock fan profile and compound which is very hot although having said that the 4 series fermi cards are well known for there heat output After changing the thermal compound to Phobya HeGrease Extreme the idle temperatures where as follows: The CPU temperature hasn't changed the results show that this compound is actually as good as Arctic Silver 5 under load in the Heaven Benchmark. As for the GPU though, we saw a 1c increase from 89c to 90c which isn't too much to worry about but it is an increase none the less. 3D Mark11 (Trial) After running the trial benchmark on 3D Mark11 the temperatures of the CPU were again same as the heaven benchmark 44c and 43c but the GPU this time was 93c, ridiculously hot if you ask me After changing the thermal compound to Phobya HeGrease Extreme the idle temperatures where as follows: Again like the Heaven bench results the result for this test is about the same as using Arctic Silver 5 with only one of the core's seeing an increase by 1c taking it to 44c/44c compared with the 43c/44c it hasn't really made a great deal of difference. The same can be said about the GPU result as it hasn't changed giving the same result as before 93c. Battlefield 3 A 30 minute game of Battlefield 3 before changing the thermal compound revealed that the CPU temperatures where: core#0 - 53c core#1 - 54c and the GPU temperature maximum temperature was 93c. I didn't bother getting a screenshot of the temperature changed because they were virtually unchanged. The CPU temperatures saw the first decrease to 52c/53c and the GPU was about the same at 91c. Overview - Good/Bad Points The chart above shows an overview of the temperatures from this test. Honestly, I was expecting some improvement over my current temperatures but Arctic Silver 5 is a pretty decent paste to compare to anyway so it's not really surprising that the yield similar results. Good Points - Compound easy to spread Compound is well packaged Large 3.5G Tube will last a while Compound Cleaner is truly amazing will definitely use again Bad points - Compound cleaner packaging could do with being better to avoid leaks Temperatures similar to Arctic Silver 5 but was expecting better Compound spreader isn't very good, too thin and flimsy Overall I would give this product an 8/10 mainly because the compound cleaner is truly brilliant and I would use this product again/recommend to friends. Thanks to I would like to thank AquaTuning for the opportunity and supplying me with this product to review and I hope to do many more reviews in the future for them. Phobya Aquatuning - Website Aquatuning - Facebook
That's what I compare it to in my review. It produces similarly impressive results without the need for the two-step approach.
Linkage: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=228517 Snapped a couple of pictures after application, results are pretty good!
