The second round will be especially interesting for people who want to find the best solution for a standard use. The winner is a big surprise. Gelid, Noctua, Phobya, Reeven, SilentiumPC, Thermal Grizzly or Zalman? We can give away that it is not an expected favourite this time. We enjoyed a nice competition in the middle category, where it takes a lot to keep making a difference. We also tested OEM paste from Scythe as a bonus.
Results and conclusion
The victory of Phobya HeGrease Extreme is a small miracle for several reasons. Its specifications do not predict it at all. Paradoxically, NanoGrease Extreme should be better, but it is not. And finally, HeGrease Extreme kind of pretends to be a rebrand of Gelid GC-Extreme which has also worse results. The lowest temperatures in the test were confirmed by testing of the second HeGrease Extreme sample.
The Kryonaut from Thermal Grizzly achieved the same temperatures, but the double price does not speak up for it. Compounds from this company are generally more expensive (Aeronaut and Hydronaut included), but they all maintain the excellent standard. The added value is not only a threaded cap with a sealing, but also a unique applicator attached to the neck of the syringe.
Noctua NT-H1 has also ended up very well. We would not buy it separately because of its price, but if you already got it together with the cooler, it does not deserve to be replaced. We emphasize this especially because such practice is not that unique. The same can be said about more expensive Scythe coolers too. Although the paste is not sold separately, it has excellent results.
This doesn’t apply to Zalman ZM-STG2 and Alphacool HeGrease Standard which does not share the benefits of its sibling. It is not a bad paste, but there are better candidates among cheaper compounds. For example, SilentiumPC Pactum PT-1. It has the same effectiveness as the MX-2, but the legendary model from Arctic still remains preferable for its price. And that is why it has earned our award for the best cost/effectiveness product, along with Phobya HeGrease which is the absolute winner with a really acceptable price.
If you would like to give us a tip for a review, feel free to do so in the comment section.
We will be grateful for any feedback!
Are good old Arctic Ceramique 1/2 not relevant thermal compounds anymore?
Hello, we will try to find out in the next test of compounds. If there are any other pastes that you are interested in, please, let us know and we will include them too. And thanks for this tip!
Nice article! 🙂
Damn!!! Nice test…
“Give this man a cookie!!!”
So do you recommend using mastergel (regular non pro/maker version) since it came with my liquid cooler. But from what I seen in your benchmark both Arctic Silver 5 and MX4 (i have both and what I usually used ) performed better than mastergel.
How can the ” Phobya HeGrease Extreme ” beat the ” Phobya NanoGrease Extreme “? It has 10 W/mk. That’s weird af imo.
Yes, it’s weird but it’s true 🙂
Great experiment! How would Thermalright TF8 @ 13.8 W/m-K, and Thermalright TFX @ 14.3 W/m-K stack-up against this list?
Would you please evaluate Halnziye HY-P13 @ 13.4 W/m-K? Thank You.
Kingpin Cooling KPx Thermal Grease
Good tests. Till now, I used mx2 cuz costwise it is hard to beat and if you test coolers or cpus, it is great for its money. But now preparing for Vega TIM change and things are little more confusing, as some of the best TIMs seems to struggle with this task. Seems that transfered heat might be kinda even bigger and on really small area. Also some pastes are better when used on watter cooling, so tems are quite low. When it goes high, hotspot on Vega for example, they lose their great effectivity. That is probabbly why some guys haf issue with Kryonaut in this case and had great results with GC extreme. I myself wanna buy Gelids extreme pads too and still thinking if also their paste or should try the best GelMaker from CM, as it seems wreck competitors too.
Thorough testing shows subtle differences shaping cooling performance.