![Quote](images/metro/teal/misc/quote_icon.png)
Originally Posted by
Ragnar
Some years ago my brother bought like a 500 gram tub of "Cooler Master" thermal paste for like $20, it's for automotive use. Shortly after we were cleaning up one of our PC's and needed some new paste, he looked at his random tub which was still 90% full, and we slapped that stuff in there... There was no discernible change in temps from the fancy Arctic Silver whatever I was running before. We've slapped that random paste into a half dozen builds since with no issues.
My conclusion is all thermal paste is basically the same. Better kinds might only cause a change of like one degree. Proper application would be far more important than what kind it is.
Yeah that seems high. But not the end of the world if on heavy loads, a CPU is designed to take that. Modern CPUs will automatically throttle themselves if they run too hot... But you shouldn't ever hit throttling, assuming it's properly cooled.