Review on 🧊 Enhanced Thermal Conductivity of Arctic MX 4 Thermal Paste by Sean Burnett

Seems like I've been building PCs forever. Like AMD 80286-16 (made under license from Intel), pretty much forever. It was interesting to watch processors go from uncooled to passively cooled and finally to actively cooled. I remember worrying a lot about what thermal paste I was buying when trying to overclock the K6 III-450. And then using PIII 1Ghz Peltier elements and many other things since then. The thing is, any thermal interface material that an OEM ships with their cooler supports the TDP that the cooling solution is advertised for (at least for legitimate products). So the old days of cleaning a crappy TIM seal to replace it with Arctic Silver are almost over. Well, something like that. If you're one of those overclockers who ruins or breaks your CPU, you probably still care about the highest thermal conductivity possible. The MoneyQiu HY-P13 board isn't like that, but it's still pretty good. My use case was using a Mini-ITX board in a Mini-ITX case. The case used a full-size ATX power supply but had gap issues with the AMD Spire Wraith OEM cooler. Then I tried the SilverStone Technology RL-KR01. When I wasn't impressed with the noise level of the Silverstone cooler, I decided to get an SFX power supply (with bracket) so I would have room to mount the Spire Wraith cooler. The problem was that I had already used the thermal paste that came with it. I was hoping that with the MoneyQiu HY-P13 I could rid the CPU and HSF of the rest of the OEM lube and get the same (or better) thermal performance. MoneyQiu gives you a regular lube, but also adds a cleanser, an applicator, and some finger covers(?). I didn't mess around with their degreaser, opting instead for rubbing alcohol and a microfiber cloth. I then applied a very thin layer of HY-P13 to the processor and installed the HSF. I had the temperatures I had previously used when using the Spire Wraith, but the ambient temperature could change by 5F. Despite this, idle and load temperatures were within a few degrees of standard thermal paste. I'm happy with the result. Recommended. If you found this review helpful, please mark it as helpful.