zlacker

I would recommend a thermal pad as an alternative to paste (I bought this: https://www.innovationcooling.com/products/ic-graphite-therm... ).

You won't ever have an issue with dry paste, and from what I can tell the CPU/GPU only runs a degree or so hotter than when using premium thermal paste.

>>depres+(OP)
Interesting, I’ve always heard that thermal pads are far inferior to paste.

>>sgeren+f3
They are, but it's always a trade-off.

Stock paste goes for longevity and cooling, so it's kinda crummy at both.

Thermal pads go for longevity with a sacrifice to cooling.

High performance paste like arctic silver goes for cooling over longevity; but can be re-applied many times as it doesn't damage hardware.

Liquid metal like Thermal Grizzly's: conductonaught, goes for extreme cooling at the expense of hardware. (IE; it will literally eat your computer, slowly, over time).

>>sgeren+f3
far inferior is a pretty huge exaggeration, graphite pads are plainly good enough in the vast majority of cases, without all the annoying downsides of paste.

>>dijit+f6
> They are, but it's always a trade-off.

According to a Linus techtips video on Youtube the difference is not really measurable. So I kind of tend to think that a high quality thermal pad is just simply superior in every way. The only reason I didn't try it, is because I couldn't find any in stock.

>>bboygr+Tz
LTT noted differences, but yes, they're not large:

https://youtu.be/YpphKzmDiJM?t=420

FWIW Steve Burke did an even more detailed burn down of these pads:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niAQs8dZohE

(LTT was later able to get -20C cooling with Liquid Metal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdTsra-uLBI )