Your next thermal compound: Mayonnaise?
I’m building a new PC right now, which I’ll detail in another post, and am spending hours in research to catch up on the latest and greatest to make my selections. Unless you’re an avid follower of the ever-changing PC parts space, you might not keep up with the day to day there unless it pertains to a relevant activity: new PC build.
Thermal compound, aka thermal grease, aka thermal interface material aka TIM, is the important heat conducting stuff that goes most notably between the heat spreader of your CPU and the heatsink + fan mounted to it. A year ago, the hardware review site extraordinaire hardwaresecrets.com did a comprehensive comparison of almost every relevant TIM on the market including some common household materials, the likes of mayo, butter, and toothpaste. While I’d never seriously entertain the notion of applying mayo to protect my multi-hundred dollar chips, it sure is interesting to see how these materials fared.
Artic Silver 5, as my TIM of choice, is one of the highest reviewed materials available and has been for the better part of a decade so I’m happy to see it maintain its rightful spot in the top 3 as part of this test. What’s shocking is how well mayo actually performed, beating out many products on the market and tying with the famous CPU cooler manufacturer Noctua’s NT-H1 product. There are many other famous names on this list beaten by mayo such as Zalman and Rosewill. Just goes to show, all TIMs are not created equal and most appear to be nothing more than expensive tubes of snake oil, er, grease rather.
Check out the full article on HardwareSecrets.com.
Thermal compound, aka thermal grease, aka thermal interface material aka TIM, is the important heat conducting stuff that goes most notably between the heat spreader of your CPU and the heatsink + fan mounted to it. A year ago, the hardware review site extraordinaire hardwaresecrets.com did a comprehensive comparison of almost every relevant TIM on the market including some common household materials, the likes of mayo, butter, and toothpaste. While I’d never seriously entertain the notion of applying mayo to protect my multi-hundred dollar chips, it sure is interesting to see how these materials fared.
Artic Silver 5, as my TIM of choice, is one of the highest reviewed materials available and has been for the better part of a decade so I’m happy to see it maintain its rightful spot in the top 3 as part of this test. What’s shocking is how well mayo actually performed, beating out many products on the market and tying with the famous CPU cooler manufacturer Noctua’s NT-H1 product. There are many other famous names on this list beaten by mayo such as Zalman and Rosewill. Just goes to show, all TIMs are not created equal and most appear to be nothing more than expensive tubes of snake oil, er, grease rather.
Check out the full article on HardwareSecrets.com.
Your next thermal compound: Mayonnaise?
Reviewed by Peter
on
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Rating: 5