Tried cheap thermal paste for the first time and ate my words

I've always used Arctic Silver for builds, swore by it for like 8 years. Last month I grabbed a $5 tube of random Chinese paste off Amazon just to see what happened. Benchmarked a Ryzen 5 build with it and temps were literally the same as my Arctic Silver builds under load. Actually ran 2 degrees cooler on idle after a week. Now I'm wondering if I've been wasting money this whole time. Anyone else tested budget paste and seen the same thing?

3 comments

3 Comments

waderamirez5d ago

Ha! I saw a Gamers Nexus video that said cheap paste works fine now.

williams.luna4d ago

Gamers Nexus is pretty thorough, I respect that. It's like how I've noticed the cheap store brand stuff works just as well as the fancy name brand for most things around my house, like dish soap or trash bags.

craig.parker4d agoTop Commenter

Cheap paste can actually dry out faster and hurt your temps in the long run.