Thermal Paste Advice

[Jpac]

I've just put in an order for a vortex III from the reviews sections (you can go there to see specs if you want I wont clutter up the forum) but I've just noticed they only use the STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING, should this be enough for heavy gaming and running lots of programs in the background or should I upgrade for the ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND?
Also what is the brand of the standard thermal paste?

 

[Angelmaker30]

For £9 I think its personally a no brainer bud.

 

[AzY]

Definitely, generally laptops especially gaming laptops will get very hot, the improved thermal paste

"guarantees exceptional heat dissipation"

So it will only help and for £9 its

 

[realh]

How much difference does it really make? I suppose it's worth it on an £800 laptop, but seeing as you can buy a whole tube of AS for less than £9 it seems a bit steep. Perhaps the heatsinks are supplied to pcspecialist with paste already applied and the price includes cleaning it etc? In which case it's quite fair.

 

[mdwh]

£9 may not seem much compared to the cost of a laptop, but it's still £9 - if I have £9 in my pocket, I'd still rather spend that on something useful, than throw it away. So the question is, does it do any good?

I believe that PCS recommendation is that the standard is sufficient, and the Artic is if you want to do overclocking (please correct me if I am wrong).

I got standard on the Vortex 3 and worried given that everyone else posting specs listed the Artic, but I've had no problems with it, even when under heavy use (e.g., using all cores when doing video conversion). The CPU temperatures seemed fine too. I'll try to remember to do some proper tests, and post some temperatures.

Yes, the CPU temperatures may be cooler with the Artic paste, but if it's well within the CPU operating range, is this a problem?

Also note that this will do nothing to help how warm or cool the laptop as a whole is to use, since it's just about dissipating heat from the CPU to the rest of the laptop.

 

[Wozza63]

You will generally not notice the effects for quite a while, maybe a 1-2' difference in temperatures at idle 4-5' at heavy load, but when the machine is older the cooling becomes worse due to dust mainly and so that extra 4-5' may be a bit more and there will be a notceable difference

Like someone else said, for £9 its a no brainer imo

 

[mdwh]

In what way would you notice it, out of interest?

 

[Wozza63]

Your lap may not burn so much if you have it on your lap, and if you are monitoring

Some CPUs, when they get to a certain temperature they drop theor clock speeds very low to allow the temperature to drop, i dont think you would really want this to happen in the middle of a game as it would cause your frame rates to drop drastically

 

[mdwh]

Your lap may not burn so much if you have it on your lap, and if you are monitoring

Would it? The paste is about transferring heat from the CPU itself, not about how heat is dissipated from the laptop.

The concern I think is only if the CPU temperature goes too high, such that it slows or even switches off - I concede that there might be the issue that heating gets poorer with dust etc over time. Although I believe that thermal paste itself is one of the things that may need replacing after time.

 

[tom_gr7]

I always get better thermal paste, its just a preference really, for general laptops I don't think its 100% required, however, if you are going to be doing CPU intensive tasks, I think it will be worth it.

Saying that, I can't, nor can anyone else accurately tell you exactly, what the difference in temperature would be. Unless of-course that user did a load of strictly run tests.