There is no more popular series of thermal pastes than MX from Arctic, which was released in the early phase of the company under the old name Arctic Cooling. Two years ago, Arctic boasted a statistical report on 10,000,000 sold pieces of MX-2 and MX-4 (in total) and now, without prior news, there has been a notice of the upcoming release of MX-5. The exact date is already known and you won’t have to wait long.
Although the market for thermal pastes is not developing as dynamically as for other components, we have to admit that a whole decade since the release of MX-4 is probably a time when we can talk about obsolescence even with thermal pastes. We believe that during that time, development and production processes have advanced in those areas as well, and this could be reflected in the newly announced MX-5. This could follow the model Noctua NT-H2, which has demonstrably advanced the capabilities of NT-H1 in its heat-conducting properties.
However, the advantage of Arctic could be a lower price. Still, Arctic products are usually cheaper and therefore available to regular users. In the end, it is also supported by the success of the company and the big sales mentioned in the introduction to this article. However, from the available information, which is relatively scarce, it is difficult to predict which direction the MX-5 will take. Whether it is a cheaper variant of the MX-4 or, conversely, it has advanced properties of this paste and will be for an additional fee. Of course, it would be best if it offered better properties for the same price, but these are just proofless speculations. The manufacturer has not yet provided any information on operational properties. No number or hint. The composition and value of thermal conductivity are thus unknown and Arctic is silent on its Twitter, where a question about a change in the basic parameters was asked.
However, it does not seem to be an electrically conductive paste with an addition of metal particles (for such pastes Arctic has a different model series – Silver) and the MX-5 will be based on silicone, possibly with a higher viscosity, who knows. The only indication we can somehow grasp is that the paste will definitely have a standard 4-gram package. Arctic presents the paste in its product images with this usual volume.
According to the illustration, the cap and the shape of the syringe have not changed compared to the previous one either. The viscosity might be different, but it was already quite low even with the MX-4. Nevertheless, in the description of the package Arctic reveals that thanks to a new composition, even thinner layers can be achieved at high (we assume that at least as high as with MX-4 – 6.0 W/mK), which could refer to the lower viscosity after all. The question is to what extent it is a retelling of real qualities and to what extent empty words from the marketing department. But one thing is obvious, and that is that the Arctic MX-5 thermal paste will be officially released on March 15, and in addition to the possibility to buy it directly on the Arctic e-shop, it is to be in limited quantity in stock on Amazon as well.
