Everyone is always trying to get an edge in the Overclocking community, and one of the most talked about items in the ClubOC forums is usually, "what kind of thermal paste are you using?" to any newcomer asking about overclocking. What a big awaking it is to be able to test all of the latest and greatest thermal goodies, only to be faced with constant pressures of what product is better then another. So here we have it, 7 of the latest and greatest thermal pastes, and the performance of each. Believe me its not easy to test each paste, especially when you find out some of your traditional favorites don't fare so well, and some of the low-cost jobs do better. On another note, their are a lot of controversial issues surrounding each company, almost like they are out to get each other, but aside from that, each paste turned out traditional numbers that are good enough to kick T.I.M. (Thermal Interface Material) to the curb.

From left to right: 1. Arctic Silver II; 2. PC Toys White Thermal Paste; 3. Thermagic; 4. Arctic Silver III; 5. Geil; 6. Arctic Silver Ceramic; 7. Arctic Silver HD

Testing

Testing consisted of the following:

• ABIT KD7-G

• AMD Athlon XP1700+ Tbred @ 10.5x166, 1.75vcore

• Thermalright SK7 w/ 70mm Vantec Aeroflow fan

• Crucial PC2100 512mb @ 2.95vmem

• 2x80gb Maxtor ATA-133 in RAID 0

• Raidmax 268Wy case w/ Raidmax 400W PSU

• 68F room temperature

• SiSoft Sandra 2003 Burn-In 10 tests default config

• RC-72 torture test for 1 min

     As you can see good ol Arctic Silver took a whompin from all the new pastes out there, as well as its new brother AS "Ceramic" and AS "High Density" (SX-5). The big surprise for most you would be the regular white paste, but from me to you there really isn't that much of a difference in this test. Of all the things that I couldn't test for would be the long term test, but I would have to say the clear winner is the Arctic Silver Ceramic which is actually quite close to the same white paste that comes with most heatsinks except its of VERY high quality and grade.

Conclusion

     We have a winner! Well ok sort of... You have to admire the millions of dollars invested into marketing of a paste from any company, but by far the one to admire the most is Arctic Silver. You've got to love AS just for the sheer prestige of owning a tube of the stuff makes all your friends jealous, and computer enthusiasts gossip about you at a LAN party. But, seriously the new samples of Arctic Silver that ClubOC received are by far better just by the fact that they perform better. I'm sure that If the test were to consist on a long-term basis the Arctic Silver II and III may have performed better due to the fact that Arctic Silver is rumored to need time to cure, but then again the Ceramic and HD showed impressive results, so I would have to say that the best paste tested is the AS HD SX-5 and AS Ceramic.