Thermal paste

[crazyinside]

Does good thermal paste make any difference to performance?

I’ve built my PC but CPU temps seem a little high, I just used the stuff that came with it but research online shows there are a lot of premium products that advertise great benefits
Are these a scam or worth buying?

 

[strollin]

Better thermal paste can help lower temps but unless your PC’s speed is being throttled due to excess heat, you won’t see increased performance by lowering the temp.

For the most part, the stock paste and cooler that come with the CPU are sufficient but if you plan to overclock the cpu in order to extract max perfrormance then you will definitely want to use the better paste and a better cooler.

 

[root]

Personally I’ve always used the cheap stuff and found it sufficent.

One thing to try if you haven’t already is to remount the cooler and repaste. I did this once as I must have done something wrong the first time and saw temps drop about 20C - pretty good for a Xeon! I probably didn’t spread it properly or tighten the cooler properly…

Is the system thermal throttling? Or are the temps more or less in line with what you would expect for the CPU?