Does Mayonnaise Last as a Thermal Compound?

Introduction

Back in 2011, we tested mayonnaise as a thermal interface between the CPU and the base of the cooler. Amazingly, it worked nicely, proving to be, at least in a short term, a better thermal compound than several well-known commercial products. But, at the time, we could not determine how long it would continue to work before a degradation in performance was noted. This time around, we ran a long-term test to determine if mayonnaise can last as a thermal compound.

We applied Hellman’s (known as “Best Foods” in the West Coast of the United States) “real mayonnaise” on our CPU, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Mayonnaise applied as thermal compound

Then, we kept our system running for 12 days, 24 hours per day, and collected data every day. Let’s see the results in the next pages.