Cooling Reviews Wärmeleitpaste und Pads

The world’s first interactive thermal paste database – real measurement data, material analysis and objective fact check!

Our database is based on real laboratory values that we have painstakingly determined according to industry standards. However, many of these results contradict the manufacturers’ marketing claims and ruthlessly expose contradictions and lies, but they are all well-founded, reproducible and legally sound. These measurements not only reflect the overall performance values of the pastes, but also enable an assessment of their suitability for a specific area of application (layer thicknesses, surfaces) as well as their suitability taking into account the individual capabilities of the respective user. In addition, the material analysis including digital microscopy is suitable for making your own assessment of the possible durability of a paste, even if I cannot and do not want to accept any liability for this. Unfortunately, measuring over 3000 cycles per paste is not feasible in terms of time and effort. Statements about the matrix and the particles used, including their size, are also important. Please refer to my other articles and all individual tests on pastes that have shown certain abnormalities.

Test setup and methods Material analysis & 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 precisely. 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 in a paste and what is not and how these pastes are produced will find what they are looking for here. The basic article is intended to give you a better understanding of what is often sold for far too much money and sometimes with adventurous promises.

You are welcome to leave suggestions and comments in the forum, via PN or e-mail. If you would also like to contribute to the project and send me samples of thermal compound that have not yet been entered in the database, please contact me by e-mail. The e-mail address can be found in the imprint. Of course, this also applies to the manufacturers whose products we would like to test, regardless of which continent the product comes from. The scope of the database is de facto unlimited and as the methods and equipment are always the same, it can be expanded over the years and still remain comparable. That is the advantage over measurements on CPUs or GPUs and changing environmental conditions. And that is why I will continue to test and add new pastes and publish individual tests for interesting products. My very special thanks also go to my colleagues at Berlin-based Nanotest GmbH and Keyence for their expert advice and support to ensure that such a major investment pays off in the end.


Thermal paste database (beta) – start wizard, search options and results

My Skills

User experience determines the success or failure of paste application. The more viscous a paste is, the more difficult it is to use. Less viscous pastes are therefore more suitable for beginners. The assistant makes a preselection of the displayed products based on the skills. Viscous pastes require more experience, but can be suitable for beginners and advanced users by heating them to approx. 50°C beforehand. The selection as ‘Expert’ then shows all pastes.

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Use Case and layer thickness

Not every paste with a high bulk thermal conductivity is also better than others at low layer thicknesses. The effective thermal resistance, including the interface resistance (contact surfaces), also plays an important role here. Universal pastes, on the other hand, always fit. Further conditions apply for use on a GPU, which can be found in the verbal assessment of the paste. Not every paste that performs well in the desired low layer thickness is really stable in the long term!

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Kommentar

Lade neue Kommentare

Tim Kutzner

Moderator

911 Kommentare 747 Likes

All Data is Beautiful ˚. ✦.˳·˖✶

Antwort Gefällt mir

Igor Wallossek

1

11,121 Kommentare 21,124 Likes

There will be more and more... Workload incoming :D

Antwort 1 Like

A
Apex Storage

Neuling

1 Kommentare 0 Likes

Awesome data! When viewing the information it says not suitable for long term or good for medium term. Do you have estimates on what this time frame is?

Antwort Gefällt mir

Igor Wallossek

1

11,121 Kommentare 21,124 Likes

I have several indicators for this. One is the so-called tear-off pattern, where I apply pressure to spread the paste on a very smooth surface. Poor pastes ‘fall apart’, i.e. the particles can be easily removed from the matrix mechanically. The second indicator is the measurement itself, which takes place in 17 individual cycles. When the measuring head is raised at the end, you can also see the surface structure of what is still adhering to the test body or what is left.

However, the most important indicator are the particles. In addition to the smallest particles in the nano and submicron range, it is the larger particles in the µm range that provide very good clues here. Are there a few large particles between 10 and 20 µm? Then the paste will not hold, because who combines cheap fillers with a very expensive matrix (siloxanes) that is needed to hold it all together? If you have the usual size of 1 to 5 µm, then you have to ask yourself how good the quality is. A few particles up to approx. 15 µm indicate a medium grinding quality, if everything remains below 10 µm, the whole thing is a little more expensive to produce and will also adhere well. Bleeding usually occurs when the particles generally vary between 1 and 15 (or 20) µm. There is no matrix that can hold such a cheap mixture together permanently.

I can't do the 3000 cycles of heating and cooling needed for the ageing simulation for every paste. But I run conspicuous pastes (see the indicators above) through ten cycles, which I even make a little more extreme (from 20 to 110 or 120 degrees) and then compare the peaks of the measurement curves to see if a trend emerges. A constantly decreasing min-BLT after cooling indicates the first signs of dissolution, outgassing during heating (max BLT) indicates inferior siloxanes.

Maybe I'll write an article about it one day :)

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Klicke zum Ausklappem
g
gaav

Neuling

6 Kommentare 1 Likes

And what does "only average durability" on for example savio glacier tg-04 ? Does this mean it will be "dry" as fast as TFX ?
savio glacier tg-04 seem like, a good cheap paste too me or am i reading the charts wrong ?

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Igor Wallossek

1

11,121 Kommentare 21,124 Likes

It is a mediocre durability. Nothing for a GPU. But cheap? Where you bought it?

The issue: it doubles the BLT from 30 to 45 degrees Celsius and back, good chance for a pump out

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g
gaav

Neuling

6 Kommentare 1 Likes

Savio glacier tg-04 is a Polish company very easy to buy in Poland Costs 25-27pln~6euro on allegro.pl cheaper then mx-6 and 2x cheaper then kold-1. I think I even saw it in Kaufland here
Well too bad i already ordered it maybe include that in your test and say its not suitable for GPU if its this bad. From the chart it looks like the best paste out of all. Top2 in thermals

Edit: but even if it doubles its blt its still around thermalright TFX BLT even when doubled so is TFX also bad for gpu ?

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Igor Wallossek

1

11,121 Kommentare 21,124 Likes

Both pastes were very high filled but they use cheap siloxane. It is easy to build such pastes for benchmarks. Please read my article about the KOLD-01. 🙂

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g
gaav

Neuling

6 Kommentare 1 Likes

Very nice read you put, a lot of time into this.
KOLD-01 has too big particles and is a cheap knockoff. But what about That savio TG-04 paste? What I noticed it has Carbon particles that separates it from all the other pastes also its particle size is 12µm (tc5888 is 10µm). From what i remember from tech uni carbon particles increase the viscosity. Just wondering maybe its actually, a hidden "diamond" ;-)

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About the author

Igor Wallossek

Editor-in-chief and name-giver of igor'sLAB as the content successor of Tom's Hardware Germany, whose license was returned in June 2019 in order to better meet the qualitative demands of web content and challenges of new media such as YouTube with its own channel.

Computer nerd since 1983, audio freak since 1979 and pretty much open to anything with a plug or battery for over 50 years.

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