TG Putty Basic, TG Putty Advance and TG Putty Pro from Thermal Grizzly put to the test – from usable to absolute top class, even in your wallet

1 - Introduction and overview 2 - Microscopy, material analysis and viscoelasticity 3 - Performance comparisons and measurements 4 - Summary and conclusion

Today I’m testing the three new putties from Thermal Grizzly with the TG Basic, the TG Advance and the TG Pro. It’s annoying that a small database leak has already shown one of the overview tables in third-party forums, but if it’s worth third parties spreading the word in advance, it ultimately only shows the continuing great interest in this topic. If necessary, you accept it as indirect advertising, because everything can be sealed again. Even if the three putties in the picture below are made in Germany, the price is pretty high. However, you would certainly be unsuitable as a businessman if you didn’t also take advantage of the putty shortage… 😀

What is Thermal Putty?

Thermal putty is a thermal interface material that has been specially developed to efficiently fill gaps between heat-generating components and heat sinks. Unlike thermal paste or pads, it is a viscoelastic mass that remains flexible and can adapt to irregular surfaces. It is particularly suitable in situations where large or uneven contact surfaces need to transfer heat evenly without the need for high mechanical pressure. That’s exactly why I’ve been working on this for so long.

Thermal putty plays an important role in a high-performance PC, e.g. on mainboard voltage converters or especially in the cooling of graphics cards. Graphics cards often have components such as VRAM chips or voltage converters that are not mounted at the same height as the GPU itself and are also at different heights. This creates gaps between these components and the heat sink. Thermal Putty can fit into these gaps perfectly and cover everything, regardless of their size or shape, thus ensuring even heat dissipation.

A major advantage of Thermal Putty is that it generally does not exert excessive mechanical stress on sensitive components. With unsuitable thermal pads, excessive contact pressure can not only damage the components themselves, but also deform the circuit boards or negatively affect other gap dimensions, so that the GPU heatsink, for example, no longer lies cleanly. Thermal putty, on the other hand, requires less contact pressure as it spreads extremely well even at low pressure due to its consistency. A common problem when using thermal pads in graphics cards is the variability of the pad thickness, as some cards use up to three different pad thicknesses and qualities, whereas thermal putty is one-size. If thermal pads do not have the optimum thickness, they either cannot exert enough pressure to ensure efficient heat transfer, or they are compressed too much, which can impair their performance, or the pressure then has an unfavorable effect on the components. As you can see, there is always something wrong.

Over time, thermal pads can dry out and harden, especially when exposed to high heat or intense stress. These changes significantly impair their elasticity and thermal conductivity. The problem is exacerbated by thermal cycling, during which the graphics card components and the cooler base expand and contract to varying degrees. These thermal stresses can not only jeopardize the structural integrity of the pads, but also lead to an uneven distribution of compressive forces, which worsens the contact between the surfaces. Another problem occurs with so-called soft or ultra-soft thermal pads. These materials are often susceptible to dissolving and oiling out under pressure. This causes liquid components to escape from the material, which can both reduce thermal performance and cause potential damage to surrounding components. Although these softer pads do not cause any immediate mechanical damage to the components due to their flexibility, their behavior under pressure can have long-term negative effects on the stability and performance of the system.

Ultrasoft thermal pads also often exhibit lower thermal performance compared to harder variants. This is because their structure is often not as dense, which limits their thermal conductivity. While their flexibility can be an advantage on uneven surfaces, their effectiveness in heat transfer is often not comparable to harder, more thermally conductive pads. These compromises make choosing the right thermal pad a crucial and usually annoying factor for the long-term efficiency and reliability of graphics card cooling systems, especially if the original thicknesses to be replaced are not known.

Thermal Putty therefore offers an ideal solution for large-area cooling, as required for modern high-end graphics cards. It enables efficient heat dissipation from components such as VRAMs and voltage converters to the heat sinks, even if these components are not perfectly aligned or flat. It maintains thermal efficiency over a long period of time without drying out or losing its properties, making it more durable than many conventional thermal pastes. Both my internal testing of prototypes and pre-production samples for well-known brands on a fee basis and the cross-testing of industrial samples of products already on the market show an interesting trend away from pads and towards putty. And I’m glad that you’re with me on this.

TG Putty Basic	TG Putty Advance	TG Putty Pro
Medium thermal conductivity	Good thermal conductivity	Very good thermal conductivity
14.90 Euro incl. VAT / 30g	24.90 Euro incl. VAT / 30g	39.90 Euro incl. VAT / 30g
EAN 4260711991196	EAN 4260711991202	EAN 4260711991189

TG Putty Basic

It’s the gateway drug to the new world of Thermal Grizzly portfolio and the putty comes in pink. Whether you like the color and price is up to you. At least the source is comprehensible and well-known. The performance is the lowest of all three offerings and it is also 10 euros less expensive than the middle variant. In terms of price, however, it is still far above most Chinese crackers, so you’ll have to work that out for yourself. I’ll provide the charts in a moment. What I don’t quite like is the slight stickiness, which is also the case with most Chinese offshoots. Yes, you can wipe it off again, but it’s not very attractive.

TG Putty Advance

This putty wears blue and the similarity to the well-known TPutty 607 and its replicas, such as those found in Hardwareliebe64, is not entirely coincidental. But Thermal Grizzly has not only reproduced something whose recipe was (legally) known, but has even improved it. It’s actually my secret favorite because it was the easiest of all three putties to remove and the performance is really good. Here too, of course, I refer to the measured values and the following analyses. And it is also the putty that stains the most, so be careful with white or black clothes. But you can wash it out.

TG Putty Pro

I have rarely had a product that performs so well, although the price is really high. However, the bulk performance is twice as high (!) as the TG Basic and far better than all other putty products tested so far. As Thermal Grizzly no longer provides any W/mK values for the reasons we all know, I’ll do so today for all three putties. And once again: Everything that the Chinese and almost all other companies print on their labels is compressed thermal conductivity romanticism for willing marketing victims. The values in the database, on the other hand, are real, conform to the standard and were validly determined on calibrated equipment.

Test setup and methods	Material analysis and microscopy	Basic knowledge
Here you can find out why effective thermal conductivity and bulk thermal conductivity can be completely different in practice, what role the contact resistance between the surfaces and the paste plays and how thermal compound can be measured accurately. There is also a detailed description of the equipment, the methodology and the error tolerances.	You will learn how laser-induced plasma spectroscopy works and the advantages and limitations of the measurements. There is also high-resolution digital microscopy and analysis of particle sizes. This information is also used to estimate the long-term stability of a paste.	Anyone who has always wanted to know what is or is not in a paste and how these pastes are produced will find what they are looking for here. The basic article provides a better understanding of what is often sold for far too much money and sometimes with adventurous promises.