ARCTIC MX-6 (4 g) - Ultimate Performance Thermal Paste for CPU, consoles, graphics cards, laptops, very high thermal conductivity, long durability, non-conductive, non-capacitive

Product Information

The dispersion is quite good, denoting that it is not as viscous as it seemed to us in the first instance, especially when we have not applied as much pressure as a heatsink will apply to the processor and, in fact, we have put much more thermal paste on the paper of the which we will cast on the IHS of the processor normally.

For a compound that costs less than half as much as leading competitors , Phobya's Liquid Metal Compound LM offers impressive performance, often besting the the CoolLaboratory Liquid Pro or Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut in our tests. When it comes to PC Cooling, enough attention is paid to the coolers, which is obvious. But thermal pastes and thermal pads play a critical role as well. After all, it is the thermal paste that will be conducting a thermal transfer from source to the cooler. Thermal paste is of paramount consideration when it comes to the effective cooling of the main components like CPU, GPU, PCH, and any other chipset. There are multiple factors contributing towards the optimal performance of the given thermal paste over the period of time like its thermal conductance, viscosity, operating temperature range, make-up, electrically conductive, cure time, etc.Like all our thermal pastes, it is non-conductive and non-capacitive. This eliminates the risk of short circuits and discharges. Noctua's NT-H1 is a super-reliable paste that has been around for years. It is regarded as one of the best with more than 150 awards and recommendations, and it's one of the best options for building or repairing computers, especially for amateurs who may not yet have a lot of experience with thermal pastes but are confident enough to use them. The NT-H1 formula also gets excellent marks for usability, with an easy-to-apply consistency. It's easy to clean when dry and is designed to not corrode. the wipes MX Cleaner To remove thermal paste they come in individual sachets, and be careful because they are wet wipes that have a very, very strong smell of disinfectant. We have tested them, and of course we recommend using them to remove the previous thermal paste naturally, without pressing too much and folding the wipe so that you always wipe it with a clean part, but once that is done, we recommend wiping it down a bit. toilet paper to the surface to remove the remains of the disinfectant liquid that may remain. It’s no surprise that the liquid metal compounds once again sit atop the thermal comparison. Still, a 6C difference between all 15 thermal compounds tested shows there isn’t a lot of variation, even with a 360 all-in-one cooler with a push+pull fan setup for performance. Ideally, we would have wanted to do 3 tests as a minimum for a single thermal paste and show the average of these three runs. I am recovering from a total hip replacement surgery and slowly resuming the testing hence only one test result is used

Why should you buy this: It is one of the best-performing pastes with excellent thermal conductivity. As shown in the slides above, the outcome of the different testing scenarios resulted in some interesting comparisons among the compounds. We’ll look at the overall thermal load averages for each, as well as the relative performance value of each in terms of price-per-gram.Liquid metal compounds make their way to the top of the temperature chart with slightly cooler values than the traditional pastes. Interestingly, the difference between the top and bottom of this chart is less than 4C. However, there is a catch to it. These wipes have very strong and unpleasant smell that doesn’t go away instantly. ARCTIC is not adding or mixing any artificial flavor for the fragrance to alter this smell. Each wipe is 115x115mm. Artic's Silver series is extremely popular among enthusiasts. The Silver series has also been around for quite some time now and the company has managed to keep it relevant in the space by adding newer, better variants to match the current standards. The Arctic Silver 5 is currently one of the most popular thermal paste solutions on the market. It's a high-density polysynthetic silver compound that's known to be very effective in a variety of builds. It contains micronized silver and several other thermally conductive ceramic particles to offer a high level of performance and stability. For the air cooling low- and high-tension tests, we used a large Noctua NH-D15 air cooler. We created the low tension mount environment by torquing the mounting screws to 1.13 Nm (10 in/lbs).

We're also putting a new take on an old approach to the test — thermal pads. These pads can be used as TIM and come as a single sheet you simply apply to your heatsink, with Thermaltake's Heilos Pad being the first new thermal pad entrant to see our test bed in the coming weeks. Thermal paste syringes have the same appearance as the vast majority of these products, of course with their identification label and with a cap that is pressured and not screwed. In terms of specifications, the Cooler Master MasteGel Regular thermal paste has a thermal conductivity of 5 W/mk, which is more in line with a lot of other options mentioned in this collection. The company also sells a premium version of this particular paste with thermal conductivity of 11 W/mk. This paste is grey in color and its density is 2.5 g. We had absolutely no issues applying the paste on the CPU. The overall performance of the solution has also been pretty solid as we've encountered no abnormalities in the CPU temps. We've used this particular paste for many of our builds and it's been a reliable option.

In the following graph you can see the result, expressed in Delta temperature, that is, measured temperature minus ambient temperature, so that even if the ambient temperature varies, the comparison is still reliable. Arctic's MX-5 did not replace the MX-4 and the two pastes continued to co-exist up until recently, even though the new one often performed better than its predecessor. By contrast, the MX-6 actually replaces the MX-5. MX Cleaner is a 100% biodegradable wipe to clean the surface of CPU and other chips for easy and complete removal of the thermal paste and its residue. Each wipe is provided in a separate sealed container to ensure a longer shelf life.

Now yes, we are going to proceed to apply the thermal paste on the processor, in this case on a Core i7-13700K from intel. The way to apply it is the one that we personally have always used and it has given us the best results; You already know that there are many theories about what is the best method to apply thermal paste, but in our experience the one that has given us the best result has always been to apply thermal paste with the size of a grain of rice and spread it with a card or similar. ARCTIC has mentioned that this thermal paste is suitable for many applications like direct die applications, graphics cards, console chips, and laptop chips. The fans of the air cooler were set to run at their full speed for which the settings were made in UEFI/BIOS. Please note that not every run of the stress test may yield the same result. This could well be due to many factors like mounting pressure, thermal paste application, and varying ambient temperature. Not to mention the silicon differences even among the same category of chips. Hence, it is pertinent to mention the testing methodology along with the specifics. Each time the even spread of the thermal paste was verified and where the thermal paste spread was not even or gives the impression of a tear or a poor application, the result was dropped and the new test with correct spread was repeated. This is done to ensure the validity of the data.Even though a dizzying array of different thermal pastes is available — some blends have been around for over a decade — new formulations still come to market at a surprising pace. Long-time PC cooler maker NZXT recently entered the market with its first paste, the not-very-excitingly named NZXT High-Performance Thermal Paste. Cooler Master introduced a new purple CryoFuze, and Alphacool unveiled its Apex thermal paste. Cooling mainstay Corsair also has a new XTM70 blend that will be heading to our test bench soon, and Gelid has recently released its GC-4 Thermal Paste, showing that the TIM market is still thriving. Thermal compounds might always be compared and debated over, but the simple fact remains: PC system building needs thermal compounds to effectively dissipate thermal loads. Without them, our beloved gaming and content-producing machines would struggle to keep components cool during heated frag sessions, heavy workstation computations, or just simply browsing the web.