Thermal Compound Roundup – March 2011
Conclusions
Contents
With ten thermal compounds tested, our previous conclusions regarding thermal compounds are still valid: there is no significant performance difference between thermal compounds, at least not with the models we included in this roundup. We will continue to add more thermal compounds to our roundup and publish our findings.
This time we decided to include the CPU temperature without any thermal compound at all (actually, using the air as
thermal compound), and our results show that the thermal compound is essential for a good cooling performance.
We also debunked the "curing time myth": at least with the compounds we tested, the performance of a recently-applyied thermal compound was the same as after the "curing time". We cannot claim that no thermal compound needs this curing, but the "curing time" seems to be a negligible factor when testing CPU coolers or thermal compounds.