ARCTIC MX-6 (4 g) - Ultimate Performance Thermal Paste for CPU, consoles, graphics cards, laptops, very high thermal conductivity, long durability, non-conductive, non-capacitive

Product Information

Like all our thermal pastes, it is non-conductive and non-capacitive. This eliminates the risk of short circuits and discharges. We'll go into our breakdown of how we test these thermal pastes below, but the key takeaway here is that a single thermal compound can perform differently based upon several variables, such as what type of cooler and mount you use. To cover all the bases, we've tested every thermal paste with three variables: Liquid metal compounds make their way to the top of the temperature chart with slightly cooler values than the traditional pastes. Interestingly, the difference between the top and bottom of this chart is less than 4C. Corsair Commander Pro, 100%/50% PWM Speed profiles (liquid cooling pump always @100%, if applicable)

You may have heard of thermal pads being used by many as a replacement for thermal paste. That's entirely normal because thermal pads are also highly efficient. Thermal pads are primarily used on M.2 SSD modules. As such the heatsink or the motherboard shroud covering the M.2 SSD module holds thermal pads to dissipate the heat produced by the modules. It works the same way as thermal paste, except these are solid pads as opposed to pasting or liquid solutions. We think the Thermal Grizzly's Carbonaut is one of the best options on the market. This can be used on both processors and GPUs too. The application of thermal pads involves placing the pad on top of the CPU IHS, thereby filling the gap between the IHS and the heatsink. Now coming to the main point of this article, the following configuration is used for thermal paste testing: – We tested each thermal paste with a low-tension air cooler mount, high-tension air cooler mount, and a high-tension AIO liquid cooler mount. Each application was given a 1-hour burn-in using Prime95 with ten load and cooling cycles over the course of the hour; six minutes each with a ten-second cool-down between. Each testing load session was then executed for a one-hour load period, again using Prime95. In the following graph you can see the result, expressed in Delta temperature, that is, measured temperature minus ambient temperature, so that even if the ambient temperature varies, the comparison is still reliable. In terms of specifications, the Cooler Master MasteGel Regular thermal paste has a thermal conductivity of 5 W/mk, which is more in line with a lot of other options mentioned in this collection. The company also sells a premium version of this particular paste with thermal conductivity of 11 W/mk. This paste is grey in color and its density is 2.5 g. We had absolutely no issues applying the paste on the CPU. The overall performance of the solution has also been pretty solid as we've encountered no abnormalities in the CPU temps. We've used this particular paste for many of our builds and it's been a reliable option.

Thermal Paste with High Performance and Easy Application

On top of that, liquid metals can't be used with aluminum heat sinks since the Gallium in them reacts with aluminum. That's not really an issue since most heat sinks (remember, not all) are made of copper which is nonreactive with the liquid metal. That being said, the high risk pays off in meaningful ways the liquid metal provides up to 73 W/(mK) thermal conductivity. It's much higher than the 0.5-12.5 W/(mK) thermal conductivity provided by conventional thermal pastes.

the wipes MX Cleaner To remove thermal paste they come in individual sachets, and be careful because they are wet wipes that have a very, very strong smell of disinfectant. We have tested them, and of course we recommend using them to remove the previous thermal paste naturally, without pressing too much and folding the wipe so that you always wipe it with a clean part, but once that is done, we recommend wiping it down a bit. toilet paper to the surface to remove the remains of the disinfectant liquid that may remain. For the air cooling low- and high-tension tests, we used a large Noctua NH-D15 air cooler. We created the low tension mount environment by torquing the mounting screws to 1.13 Nm (10 in/lbs). Artic's Silver series is extremely popular among enthusiasts. The Silver series has also been around for quite some time now and the company has managed to keep it relevant in the space by adding newer, better variants to match the current standards. The Arctic Silver 5 is currently one of the most popular thermal paste solutions on the market. It's a high-density polysynthetic silver compound that's known to be very effective in a variety of builds. It contains micronized silver and several other thermally conductive ceramic particles to offer a high level of performance and stability. Liquid metal offers the best performance compared to any thermal paste out there, and the Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut proves that with its rated thermal conductivity of 73 W/mk. It has the potential of reducing temperatures by over 10 degrees Celsius in certain cases. The incredible performance of this liquid metal compound comes at a cost, though. Since it is electrically conductive, it can damage parts of your system if you don't apply it properly. MX Cleaner is a 100% biodegradable wipe to clean the surface of CPU and other chips for easy and complete removal of the thermal paste and its residue. Each wipe is provided in a separate sealed container to ensure a longer shelf life.As shown in the slides above, the outcome of the different testing scenarios resulted in some interesting comparisons among the compounds. We’ll look at the overall thermal load averages for each, as well as the relative performance value of each in terms of price-per-gram. The modus operandi has been the same: spread out a grain of rice with thermal paste, mount a heatsink, leave it on for 20 minutes at rest, Prime95 for 10 minutes, turn off the computer for 10 minutes and, with this, the paste is settled. Then we turn on the PC again and stress the processor with Prime95 for 10 minutes, capturing the maximum temperature that any of the cores has had. When it comes to PC Cooling, enough attention is paid to the coolers, which is obvious. But thermal pastes and thermal pads play a critical role as well. After all, it is the thermal paste that will be conducting a thermal transfer from source to the cooler. Thermal paste is of paramount consideration when it comes to the effective cooling of the main components like CPU, GPU, PCH, and any other chipset. There are multiple factors contributing towards the optimal performance of the given thermal paste over the period of time like its thermal conductance, viscosity, operating temperature range, make-up, electrically conductive, cure time, etc.

Thermal compounds might always be compared and debated over, but the simple fact remains: PC system building needs thermal compounds to effectively dissipate thermal loads. Without them, our beloved gaming and content-producing machines would struggle to keep components cool during heated frag sessions, heavy workstation computations, or just simply browsing the web. The wipe is made of 100% Limonene extracted from citrus essential oil. This would mean that these wipes don’t have alcohol or benzenes as this substance is used in industrial applications for cleaning as it is effective and gentle on metals and alloys. The fans of the air cooler were set to run at their full speed for which the settings were made in UEFI/BIOS. Ideally, we would have wanted to do 3 tests as a minimum for a single thermal paste and show the average of these three runs. I am recovering from a total hip replacement surgery and slowly resuming the testing hence only one test result is used Please note that not every run of the stress test may yield the same result. This could well be due to many factors like mounting pressure, thermal paste application, and varying ambient temperature. Not to mention the silicon differences even among the same category of chips. Hence, it is pertinent to mention the testing methodology along with the specifics. Each time the even spread of the thermal paste was verified and where the thermal paste spread was not even or gives the impression of a tear or a poor application, the result was dropped and the new test with correct spread was repeated. This is done to ensure the validity of the data.A graphics card with a much higher heat load or the HEDT/EPYC CPUs with large surface areas are better candidates for thermal paste testing. For a compound that costs less than half as much as leading competitors , Phobya's Liquid Metal Compound LM offers impressive performance, often besting the the CoolLaboratory Liquid Pro or Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut in our tests.