Guru3D Thermal Paste Roundup - Round 2 (2021)

Cooling 189 Page 6 of 13 Published by

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Testing methodology

Testing methodology

The thermal pastes were tested in various scenarios. Our CPU is always overclocked in all tests to show the temp differences between the reviewed products more effectively.  

The following things will be checked:

  • temperatures of the Intel Core i9 9900K at 5.0 GHz and 1.35 Volts with an air cooler
  • temperatures of the Intel Core i9 9900K at 5.0 GHz and 1.35 Volts with an AIO cooler
 

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  • temperatures of the Intel Core i9 10850K at 5.1 GHz and 1.35 Volts with an air cooler
  • temperatures of the Intel Core i9 10850K at 5.1 GHz and 1.35 Volts with an AIO cooler
 

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  • temperatures of the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X at 4.3 GHz and 1.4 Volts with an air cooler
  • temperatures of the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X at 4.3 GHz and 1.4 Volts with an AIO cooler
 

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The room (ambient) temperature is kept 22-23 degrees Celsius (and we'll also include the delta temperature this time). We decided to go with Intel Core i9 9900K, Intel Core i9 10850K and the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X. When overclocked, they can generate very high temperatures. We'll be testing the i9 9900K CPU at 5.0 GHz and 1.35 Volts because this is the lowest voltage that provided stability.  For the i9 10850K, 1.35 Volts was necessary to achieve 5100 MHz.  The Ryzen CPU needed to have 1.4 V to reach 4.3 GHz. The reported temperatures come from the processor package sensor. T

Important note – each thermal paste has been cured for 72 hours to achieve the best performance (this time should be enough to reach the potential for most of them), including a two h OCCT large-data stability test and daily usage. Each one has been applied using the big X pattern, as it's relatively easy to do and proved to be very accurate in spreading the paste evenly on the IHS. 

What CPU coolers did we use?

 We went with two types of coolers. The air cooler was a Cryorig R1 Ultimate, with two fans swapped to the Be Quiet Silent Wings 3 140 mm High Speed. For the AIO cooler, we used the Asus Ryujin 360, which we reviewed back in December '18.

The other components that we used were:

  • Asus Strix Z390-E Gaming
  • Asrock Z590 PG Velocita
  • Gigabyte X470 AORUS GAMING 7 WIFI
  • Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti Gaming OC
  • Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB
  • Seasonic Prime Titanium Ultra 850 W

The chassis is the Phanteks Evolv X, which we reviewed in October '18. It's our daily-driver case due to its good thermals and capacity.

What CPU stress program did we use?

The measurements were taken with an OC (5.0 GHz @ 1.35 V for the i9 9900K, 5.1 GHz @ 1.35 V for the i9 10850K and Ryzen 7 3700X, it was 4.3 GHz with 1.4V applied).  A security feature was enabled, which powers down the system when it reaches 95°C. We measured the package temperature, as per-core temps can differ slightly (though it also depends on the CPU type and even on the particular chip). We recorded the maximum temperature reading for LOAD testing after 30 minutes of OCCT 4.5.1 load with a small data set. Yes, the 5.x version is already out, but the older generated higher power consumption and heavy CPU usage.

Why not all thermal pastes appear on the charts?

For the Intel Core i9 9900K, you'll find almost all of the pastes, except the Arctic MX-5 and Cryorig CP7, because they appeared later at my hands. On the other hand, the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and Intel Core i9 10850K doesn't have all of the contenders from the 1st roundup as it would take a massive amount of time to recheck them all. Still, you should see the most important/interesting ones for the new (in our methodology) CPUs.

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