Thermal Compound Roundup – September 2011

Conclusions

This time, the samples of compounds that we tested had performances that ranged from poor to excellent among the compounds we have tested so far.

For example, the Enermax (Dow Corning TC-5121) compound performed wonderfully, while the Rosewill RCX-TC060PRO had a very bad performance. Please notice that we tested this compound twice (removing it, cleaning the CPU and cooler base, applying it again, and then remaking the test) to ensure that this result was not caused by an installation issue. The results were identical in both tests.

Another odd result was about the use of chocolate as a thermal interface. While the other unusual compounds we tried so far (lipstick, toothpaste, and oil) worked reasonably well as a thermal paste, chocolate proved to be a very bad choice. Actually, in our tests, using chocolate as a thermal compound was worse than using no compound at all.