Thermal Grease and you...

[eviltt]

So.. I am building my own FAQ.. something I am going to call the noobs guide to bitcoinage...

As part of that one of the things I am curious about is thermal grease/paste.


Which is considered the best?  and why?

the other reason I ask is that i have 2 what appear to be identical 5870 cards. getting similar hash rates... same fan percentage, but one is almost 10c cooler than the other (and its the one sandwiched between the 5970 and the other 5870...)

so I wonder if the paste/grease on the other 2 might be getting old and dried out, or just not applied as well as on the 3rd card.

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[P4man]

It can be a million other things besides the grease;
it could be air flow. Being sandwitched sounds bad, but it could be better than a card thats inhaling hot air from your PSU.
are the fan RPMs the same? One fan might be wearing out.
Also no 2 chips are identical. Powerconsumption varries, and therefore temperatures.
maybe the heatsink is not mounted as well.

As for thermal paste; you want thick stuff for gpus. With cpus, ive never really noticed any real difference between one paste and the other, but for some reason, with GPUs I have. In my experience, thicker gunky stuff = better . I also found I had to use a lot more than with cpus for some reason

[check_status]

There was a youtube video of a guy unboxing a 6990 and adding a waterblock. He never cleaned the old paste off the GPU's just put more over top of the old factory stuff. He probably spent $800+ and didn't take the time to take care of his investment, and it was his "How To". More like a How Not TO! 

[Kluge]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/geek_tested_17_thermal_pastes_face

Good summary of the best to the worst. Compared  performance to price also

That article did not test mayonnaise. It is garbage.

[jake262144]

That article did not test mayonnaise. It is garbage.

They did test cheese though. Craving for mayonnaise?

[despoiler]

Arctic Cooling MX-2 is unbeatable for price to performance.