PSA: That $40 'premium' thermal paste isn't worth it for standard builds

I wasted $40 on a fancy thermal paste kit last month for a simple office PC build, and temps were the SAME as my $8 tube of Arctic MX-4. Has anyone else fallen for the hype on expensive pastes or am I the only one?

2 comments

2 Comments

schmidt.amy1mo ago

My buddy Mike dropped $50 on some liquid metal stuff for his gaming rig and spent an hour panicking about it dripping onto his motherboard. His temps dropped like 2 degrees compared to the regular paste he had before, and he almost shorted his whole system out. Idk, seems like a whole lot of risk for basically no real gain on a normal setup.

jamies451mo ago

You ever actually have to scrape that liquid metal off a CPU after a year? Its a nightmare. People get sold on the idea of "premium" paste but forget that once your cooler is decent, the paste is barely doing any heavy lifting. I've built dozens of rigs with that $8 MX-4 and never had a temp issue worth crying over. Unless you're doing extreme overclocking or sub-ambient cooling, you're basically burning cash. Stick with the cheap stuff and put that extra money into a better fan or something that actually makes a difference.