Is this thermal paste good for repairing consoles with?

[WyverntekGameRepairs]

Hi, I was wondering if this thermal paste I got is good for doing repairs on consoles? I used it on my PS4 APU because the old paste was dust, and it now actually runs silent. I also used it on my laptop, and that runs mostly-silent (it triggers the fan high and low pretty rapidly when the processor is being put under stress because it is transferring heat so efficiently). But I’ve heard many horror stories about cheap thermal pastes working really well but then quickly degrading and drying out. So far, it has been about a year, and my PS4 still runs silent. Laptop performs the same, if not a little better (though this could be engineering placebo effect). It is by Cooler Master. I got it for $5.00 from Walmart’s online store. Should I continue to use this paste, or should I switch to something like Arctic Silver?

(Btw I took out the insert when I got it, so it did have an insert. I kept the smoothing tool and templates).

[jogri]

I've used a similar 5€ Cooler Master paste for over six years (bought a tube in 2013) and it is still working perfectly (i think the current paste on my CPU is nearly five years old). The pase that is left in the tube did not dry out (i am still using it), dunno about the state of the paste on the CPU, but i guess that it is still good as my PC isn't overheating. So if your paste is somewhat similar to mine you should be fine using it.

[DaJMasta]

Should be fine.  People who are really into it or overclockers will have their strong preferences, but if you've got a fairly major name brand selling a tube of it, it's probably at least alright.  I've liked arctic silver 5 and arctic silver ceramique (cheaper and in a big tube) in the past as well.


Worth mentioning that the original application to the heatsink was probably a decent thickness thermal pad/paste direct application which tends to be somewhat thicker than it needs to be to compensate for automated assembly tolerances and such.

[Black Phoenix]

There are a lot of good thermal pastes for CPU/GPU use. From my own experience and use (from the worse to the best):

Arctic Ceramique;
Arctic Silver 5;
Arctic MX2/MX4;
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut/Hydronaut.

In terms of drying out, the Ceramique is one that it happens, the others no, even after years of use.

[Jeroen3]

I always use non-conductive generic compound.
https://octopart.com/search?q=HTCP20S

As long as you do not have specific requirements for the compound granular size due to surface roughness you can even use nutella.

[Rasz]

fancy thermal paste and cpu delidding is a big audiophile scam city, makes sense only in extreme OC situations.
Ordinary industrial white stuff is fine.

[Black Phoenix]

fancy thermal paste and cpu delidding is a big audiophile scam city, makes sense only in extreme OC situations.
Ordinary industrial white stuff is fine.

Say that when you have a Intel CPU were the thermal interface or the solder used between the silicon die and the heatspreader is so shitty/not well bonded than the CPU hits 100^oC in less than 15 sec of running anything CPU intensive. Specially on the 8700K/7980XE (thermal interface) and 9700K/9900K/9980XE (Solder).

I had cases where I solved by lapping the surface (convex or concave) of the heatspreader and some that I had to delid, change the interface and reattach. In all cases I saw a minimum of 15^oC gains in 100% CPU utilization over all cores, to 25^oC (in delids) to 30^oC in direct die contact. And I'm talking no overclock involved, just the normal Intel Turbo Boost Technology. The stuff Intel uses dries up to fast and is poorly applied. In a CPU heatspreader/cooler interface were you can easily remove the cooler and reapply it really doesn't bother me, but in a CPU were the lid is glued to the substrate and it's not easily removed without some potential damaging ways (if you don't know what you are doing) then that really matters a lot.

And that is cases that a search on the web can show results, and are verifiable, not as most of the audiophile stuff (directional audio cables, power conditioners and gold tip Toslink cables to mention some...) who have claims that can't be proved.

[Rasz]

what you describe are defective products

[fzabkar]

fancy thermal paste and cpu delidding is a big audiophile scam city, makes sense only in extreme OC situations.
Ordinary industrial white stuff is fine.

Say that when you have a Intel CPU were the thermal interface or the solder used between the silicon die and the heatspreader is so shitty/not well bonded than the CPU hits 100^oC in less than 15 sec of running anything CPU intensive. Specially on the 8700K/7980XE (thermal interface) and 9700K/9900K/9980XE (Solder).

Are you saying that you delidded a soldered IHS, replaced the solder with paste, and were then able to achieve lower die temperatures?

[niffcreature]

I think calling it a "repair" isn't really accurate, everything with a heatsink has some kind of thermal compound on there, right? I think it's rare that it fails.

Heatpipes can also fail if they leak since they have liquid/vapor in a vacuum. Some badly designed laptops (and I think game systems) have failed because of the fan control is programmed to only turn on the fan at all when the chip hits 70c or something, and just constantly heat cycles it.

[Black Phoenix]

Are you saying that you delidded a soldered IHS, replaced the solder with paste, and were then able to achieve lower die temperatures?

Probably I should had explained better: This procedure was only done on Intel CPUs, since AMD uses a proper soldered die to the heatspreader. There are users who delid the AMD CPU and gained temps of 2^oC, so not worth the time spend, Although Intel is were the biggest gains are. A 9900K just delid, clean the solder and change to thermal paste, you earn 5^oC at OC 5GHz All Cores:





My use case:

The Soldered ones the solder was scraped and replaced with Liquid Metal. That CPUs were mostly used in direct die cooling, so no heat spreader. The Thermal pasted ones were clean and applied better thermal paste. That ones were reinstalled the heat spreader on them. So yes in direct die cooling with liquid metal is were you get the best performance. Also forgot to say that I also done some under voltage to try to find the minimum voltage needed for the CPU to run at his Turbo Settings without crashing.

There are enough examples on Reddit r/Overclocking or even Youtube Videos with the full testing and temperatures. Unfortunately there aren't that many who Delid and do undervolting. Mostly of the videos available the delid is for overclock. My objective was to reduce temperatures of the CPUs without using water cooling since it were for production PCs that could not stop and I could not afford a leak in a watercooling loop. Knowing that Air is a worse thermal interface than Water, I put everything on the table to get as low as possible on air. Stability over Performance, that was what I wanted.

Regarding liquid metal and the danger of the same flowing and shorting the surface mount components on a CPU (and GPU too, by the way) just cover said components with thermal paste. No need to do a conformal coating, although is the correct way of doing it.

[David Hess]

Practically any thermal paste will be good for consoles.

I still prefer the zinc oxide based thermal pastes and am working my way though a 10 year old 2 ounce bottle of Wakefield 120 which is the epitome of "white paste" thermal compound.  Somewhere I have a 30 year old bottle of the same thing which I misplaced.

I also have bottles of "silicon heat transfer compound" and "super thermal grease II" from MG Chemicals and they work fine also.  I think the former is identical to Wakefield 120.  The later is gray and includes aluminum oxide in addition to zinc oxide and does not use silicon oil.

The silicon oil based ones should never dry out.  I am not sure about the others.  The disadvantage of the silicon oil is that it creeps and interferes with soldering if it gets into a joint.

In theory the aluminum oxide and diamond based thermal compounds should have two or more times the thermal conductivity however in practice the layer of grease is so thin that the difference is insignificant and other factors limit performance.  Maybe they are better where the mechanical interface is worse.