Gaming PC

GPU Cooler Tested With Ketchup, Potatoes, and Cheese as Thermal Paste

Finding the right TIM can be a difficult task, but some people are adventurous. Case in point: An aficionado recently expanded his search for GPU thermal paste to include several interesting substances, from regular thermal paste to thermal pads, cheese, ketchup, toothpaste, diaper rash ointment, and even potatoes. included. A user initially started testing different types of thermal pads but decided to expand to other substances and used some substances that were definitely not safe for long term use for his GPU cooling I decided to do an interesting and interesting study on

In our test system, we used a Radeon R7 240 with a TDP of 30W and ran Furmark for 5 minutes to measure the temperature. As such, these tests are not a good indicator of the long-term feasibility of using potatoes to cool chips.

A user shared a spreadsheet showing the results containing 22 tested thermal “paste” materials. This listing includes standard thermals in various sizes such as Arctic TP2 0.5mm, 1mm, 1.5mm, Arctic TP3 1mm, 1.5mm, EC360 Blue 0.5mm, EC360 Gold 1mm, 0.5mm EKWB and Thermal Grizzly Minus 8 thermal pads. Includes some pads.

After these relatively safe options are gone, next are the rare materials not designed for thermal conductivity in GPU applications. This includes double-sided aluminum copper tape, cheese slices, potato slices, ketchup, copper paste, penatene cream for diapers. rash. Enthusiasts have also used a wide range of toothpastes, including Amasan T12, Silber Wl.paste, Kupferpaste, and unbranded unnamed toothpastes, some of which you may not recognize.

(Image credit: Computerbase)

Unsurprisingly, most of the worst performances were almost all food-related items.

Things like slicing cheese and potato slices caused the GPU to overheat and trigger the thermal throttling mechanism when the GPU reached the maximum temperature of 105 degrees Celsius. EC360 Blue 0.5mm Thermal Pads, 0.5mm EKWB Pads, Arctic TP2 1mm Pads, Arctic TP2 1.5mm Pads, Thermal Grizzly Minus 8 1.5mm Pads Copper tape throttling and some thermal pads didn’t work either. The double-sided aluminum sticky pads were the worst offender of them all, causing the system to shut down.

However, the rest of the thermal application was working and no GPU thermal throttling occurred. This includes 0.5mm Arctic TP2 thermal pad, 1mm Alphacool Apex thermal pad, Arctic TP3 1mm thermal pad, 1mm EC360 Gold thermal pad and 1.5mm Arctic TP3 thermal pad. All of these thermal pads kept the GPU between 61C and 79C.

Amasan T12 was the top at 63°C, Silber Wl.paste at 65°C, and unnamed plain toothpaste was the worst at 90°C. Surprisingly, ketchup worked very well and kept the GPU at his 71C.

The usual thermal paste had two competitors: Arctic’s MX-4 and Corsair TM30. Unsurprisingly, both times he kept the R7 250 the coolest of the group, with temperature results of 49C and 54C respectively.

We do not recommend using anything other than the proper thermal interface material for your GPU, but these findings are very interesting.

If you’re looking for a wider selection of thermal paste tests, check out Best Thermal Pastes for CPUs in 2023: 90 Tested and Ranked Pastes article for a wide selection of tests with CPUs including toothpaste. There is also

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