Warning: cheap thermal paste vs Arctic MX-6 is a 15C difference

I used the free tube that came with my cooler on my Ryzen 5 and hit 92C under load, swapped to MX-6 and now I'm at 77C max. Has anyone else noticed that much of a gap with generic paste brands?

3 comments

3 Comments

aaronf408d ago

Yep, I've seen similar jumps. That stock paste is usually just cheap silicone filler that dries out fast. MX-6 is legit thermal compound, not just some generic goop they threw in the box.

patricia428d ago

Did your friend try that MX-6 too? My buddy John threw some on his old Ryzen 2600 and dropped like 8 degrees on the core temp, totally fixed his random shutdowns during gaming sessions. @aaronf40 is right, that factory stuff is always garbage, he had the same nasty dried out crust on his when we popped the cooler off.

mitchell.nancy5d ago

Hold up I gotta push back a little on that 8 degree drop claim lmao. I mean sure fresh paste usually helps a few degrees but 8 seems like a lot unless that factory stuff was literally crumbling apart. I've swapped paste on a bunch of old rigs and honestly most of the time you're looking at like 2-3 degrees if even that. People get all hype about thermal compound like it's magic but half the time the cooler just wasn't seated right or the fan curve was set wrong. Not saying MX-6 is bad or anything it's fine, just feels like we're treating a tube of goop like it's the holy grail of pc fixes.