[EOL] Arctic MX-5 is here!!Tests incoming! Completed. Now its MX-6 testing time!

[8BitZ80]

I have GD 900 on my GPU atm, repasted it a few months ago with it. 'also changed thermal pads'
My bro bought it sometime ago cause it was cheap and heard good things about it.
I think I've seen Bryan talking about it on TechYesCity and he liked/suggested it as a cheap alternative to MX 4.

So far the temps are all good, longevity is what I'm not sure about but it can't be worse than how the original factory paste looked like after 3 years.

We do have MX 4 around and been using it for years on our CPUs with no issues but I did not want to 'waste' it on my GPU in case I mess it up. 'I don't usually repaste GPUs, first time actually'

Yeah it's good stuff, possibly even underrated. I'm still using the first 30g tube I got in late-2019. My GTX1060 has been running it for about a year and it's still doing great.

One of my biggest complaints about common thermal pastes is that the small tubes are always running empty. That really sucks if you're doing CPU benchmarks and need to apply thermal paste many times. Bulk thermal paste is almost non-existent at retailers and on Ebay the definition of "bulk" is to buy a 20x or 50x lot of 1g tubes. It's so utterly dumb. A big 30g tube makes life so much better that I would pay good money to get one. And the fact that GD900 is so cheap and is so effective, for me personally it's a no-brainer.

 

[freeagent]

It looks like its rated similarly to AS5.

I know people talk alotta smack about that paste, but its really not that bad lol..

 

[Space Lynx]

It looks like its rated similarly to AS5.

I know people talk alotta smack about that paste, but its really not that bad lol..

there is simply no reason to risk a conductive paste when we have so many safer options, that's all.

i use coffee filter to clean my tim off, it doesn't leave any residue and my dad always has like a thousand of them in the pantry so eh.

 

[freeagent]

But its not conductive lol, its capacitive

I used it since socket 462, its fine.

 

[Space Lynx]

But its not conductive lol, its capacitive

I used it since socket 462, its fine.

AMD R5 5600X @ 4600MHz 1.225v

please tell me what settings you are using to get this stable... you either got a golden chip or I am doing settings all wrong.

 

[yotano211]

I use cool Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra with thermal tape around the processor on my laptop.
I still have one of those mega tubes of mx4 somewhere in a box.

 

[freeagent]

AMD R5 5600X @ 4600MHz 1.225v

please tell me what settings you are using to get this stable... you either got a golden chip or I am doing settings all wrong.

Sure, I just set the multi to 46, core vid per ccx voltage to 1.225, the CPU over voltage override to the same value. 1 clock 1 voltage.. I tried so hard to nail down 4700 but just couldn't do it, at least with up to 1.325 it wouldn't. I did not set any LLC, all that stuff was left to auto. I did try up to max though. I have not changed any voltages other than vcore stuff for all core and vdimm. To get over 1900 I found was all sub timings. Also my 3600XT was better with 4 sticks. But.. to be fair I didnt spend much time with them once I got over 2000 FCLK

 

[jboydgolfer]

there is simply no reason to risk a conductive paste

im curious if anyone who actually should have their hands inside of a PC, has ever damaged something with Arctic Silver5. (rhetorical, im certain a million fools have damaged a million components all in equally ridiculous way)
ive used the stuff for what 2 decades or so, & ive heard this claim , & im aware of how conductivity can be dangerous to components.

its just that i get the 'wrist strap' feeling whenever i see someone post about/regarding the 'dangers' of AS5.
water is SUPER conductive, yet we cool electronics with it all the time, & there are lots of alternatives.

it just seems like this argument is a silly one to make (not that you personally were making an argument, im speaking more to the subject generally), nothing against you, its not like youre the first to post it, i just dont see the argument.

i dunno, maybe its just me

 

[freeagent]

Its nothing like liquid metal. I haven't used liquid metal before.. but I would be more comfy splashing AS5 around then LM.

 

[Space Lynx]

im curious if anyone who actually should have their hands inside of a PC, has ever damaged something with Arctic Silver5. (rhetorical, im certain a million fools have damaged a million components all in equally ridiculous way)
ive used the stuff for what 2 decades or so, & ive heard this claim , & im aware of how conductivity can be dangerous to components.

its just that i get the 'wrist strap' feeling whenever i see someone post about/regarding the 'dangers' of AS5.
water is SUPER conductive, yet we cool electronics with it all the time, & there are lots of alternatives.

it just seems like this argument is a silly one to make (not that you personally were making an argument, im speaking more to the subject generally), nothing against you, its not like youre the first to post it, i just dont see the argument.

i dunno, maybe its just me

well on the issue of water, I have used air coolers exclusively for the very same risk vs reward logic that I use for paste. I have several friends on steam who have informed me of their AIO leaking after 3-5 years, and I'm type of person to forget this kind of stuff, so I'd probably forget to check it often enough. where as with a nice air cooler, i can set it and leave it forever almost, minus dusting fans once in awhile.

 

[PaulieG]

AMD R5 5600X @ 4600MHz 1.225v

please tell me what settings you are using to get this stable... you either got a golden chip or I am doing settings all wrong.

No golden chip. Mine is similar. Voltage and frequency scaling on these chips do get weird over 4.5ghz. For instance, I need just 1.18v to get 4.5ghz stable, then 1.24v for 4.6ghz. Freeagent can get stable at 4.6 with slightly lower vcore, but he can't get stable at all at 4.7 whereas my chip will stabilize at 4.7ghz on 1.29v. Maybe I am just more familiar with the other voltage settings that help stabilize higher frequencies. Who knows.

Unrelated....I'm irrationally annoyed with the whole IF and memory relationship with Ryzen. Despite how good these chips really are, I hate being handicapped on memory overclocking unless you have highly binned B-Die. Most don't care, but I'm not much of a gamer. My game is overclocking and benchmarking. After playing with this little Intel i5 10600k I just picked up, I very well might sell my 5600x and Asus Strix B550 and grab a 11th gen Intel setup just for the overclocking flexibility with memory despite lower overall performance on the platform.

 

[Keullo-e]

I'll buy this instantly when it's available here in Finland. MX-4 has been my fav paste already for some time.

 

[freeagent]

Either that or I am just more familiar with the other voltage settings that help stabilize higher frequencies. Who knows.

That is pretty safe to say!

 

[jboydgolfer]

id put this on my reference 3090, but i dont have an engineering Degree

 

[PaulieG]

I'll buy this instantly when it's available here in Finland. MX-4 has been my fav paste already for some time.

I used nothing but MX-4 after the first couple of years after it came out. It's just an all around solid paste. Not the best, but very good at everything you look for in a paste. The only better all around paste I've worked with is Noctua NT-H1. Maybe the MX-5 will end up on par with the Noctua, but in all honestly these pastes can only be so good. Much of the time temps have more to do with proper paste application and seating your cooler correctly.

 

[Keullo-e]

I used nothing but MX-4 after the first couple of years after it came out. It's just an all around solid paste. Not the best, but very good at everything you look for in a paste. The only better all around paste I've worked with is Noctua NT-H1. Maybe the MX-5 will end up on par with the Noctua, but in all honestly these pastes can only be so good. Much of the time temps have more to do with proper paste application and seating your cooler correctly.

Yup, the Noctua paste is also fine, bought it once as my local store didn't have other good quality paste. Usually I order stuff from online tho, but as I had to get paste ASAP.

 

[maxfly]

Got my MX-5 a day early. It is indeed baby blue lol. They make no claims as to it being superior to mx4 on the box. I thought they would make SOME kind of claim to it being a few degrees better or something other than it just being a prettier color...but no just the usual its non-conductive, capacitive, corroding etc etc etc
I may have time to get it applied and and run some comparison tests tonight.

 

[Space Lynx]

Got my MX-5 a day early. It is indeed baby blue lol. They make no claims as to it being superior to mx4 on the box. I thought they would make SOME kind of claim to it being a few degrees better or something other than it just being a prettier color...but no just the usual its non-conductive, capacitive, corroding etc etc etc
I may have time to get it applied and and run some comparison tests tonight.

please post them here, I am very interested. I'm more busy than I expected to be this week. so mine are delayed until weekend at least.

 

[R-T-B]

im curious if anyone who actually should have their hands inside of a PC, has ever damaged something with Arctic Silver5

I did, but I was young and probably shouldn't have had my hands in the PC...

That's how you learn sometimes though.

 

[maxfly]

please post them here, I am very interested. I'm more busy than I expected to be this week. so mine are delayed until weekend at least.

Finalllyyy had a chance to give it a try. Heres the low down. Original paste is prolimatech pk3 thats been on for a couple of weeks.
Cpu- i7 8086k bone stock
Mb- Asrock z390 phantom gaming 9
Heatsink- Noctua chromax u12s with dual fans.
Ran aida64 cpu stress test for 30 mins after letting the rig come up to temp while browsing the forum for 10mins.
PK3 temps
Idle- 26c to 28c across all 6 cores almost exclusively. Very little variation in temps.
25c lowest and
31c hottest.
Load- 49c to 51c. Once the cpu got up to speed temps pretty much stayed the same. They didnt change for the most part. Hottest core hit 53c here and there for a quick second, coldest dropped to 47c in the same manner.
Pulled the hs after the 30 minute mark.
Cleaned the u12s and the cpu with 91% isopropyl and a wash cloth.
Used a qtip to clean the edges of the proc.
Using the same application method as with the pk3 (used a thermal grizzly spatula) i put half a pea sized drop of mx-5 on the cpu and used the mx-5 spatula to spread it as thinly as possible. Ended up with about 10-15% left on the spatula. MX-5 spatula is really flexible.
Right at first the mx-5 came out of the tube kind of runny but only a tiny bit. Overall consistency is the same as that of any other quality paste after that. Easy to apply and spread with or without the spatula. Not to thick or thin. Only took a minute or two to get a nice thin smooth coating.
MX-5 temps
Idle- 28c to 36c while browsing for 10mins. All 6 cores jumped around quite a bit to the point that i really questioned my mount. Unlike the pk3 they never stayed at a specific temp rather were all going from as low as 28c to as high as 36c constantly.
Load- 50c to 56c
coldest core 46c
hottest 57c.
For the first 10 or so minutes temps were hopping up and down like the idle temps but after around 20 minutes they noticeably settled down to the 50-56c that i recorded and stayed right there until the test completed. My assumption is it just needed a bit of burn in or there were air bubbles, "shrug"
So overall its solid stuff. I still wonder if maybe i didnt get quite as good a mount with the mx-5 as i did withe pk3 but itll have to wait for another day for another remount. As it is im satisfied with the temps and look forward to seeing how everyone else fares with their new baby blues.

EDIT- SORRY FOR THE BOOK!

 

[lexluthermiester]

kind of surprised to see the MX-5 is blue

i havent used MX in a long time, but i dont recall it being blue before.

View attachment 191467

It's never been blue before.

I've always used toilet paper for cleaning the surfaces and it works fine.

I use QTips.

 

[Space Lynx]

@maxfly thanks for posting your temps, I am swamped with new work related stuff this week. so my project is indefinitely postponed.

bit sad to see you got worse scores than P3. I haven't opened mine yet.

I imagine Noctua NT-H2 and Kryonaut Extreme will beat this paste as well, however, it's important to note that this paste can last 8 years (probably longer) in storage, where as the other pastes have a life expectancy of 3 years, I know the Noctua one says shelf life of 3 years, I think anyway.

and as I said before, this mx-5 is more just for emergency usage for whenever I upgrade or something and forget to buy paste, I will have something long term in storage ready to go.

 

[R-T-B]

it's important to note that this paste can last 8 years (probably longer) in storage

On a mounted cooler too.

 

[Blaylock]

@maxfly Do you plan to repeat this test in a week or two to see if there is an extended burn-in time? The MX-5 looks like it's a long way from where the MX-2 was. The MX-2 took a while before drying a bit and settling down. Just wondering if the MX-5 is the same way.

Thanks for the results.

 

[Vayra86]

TBF past a bottom level of low-performing pastes, they're all more similar than different on temps. There is basically "viable" "not viable" and "temperature delta margin nervosa" for options. The ones that ARE far enough behind to seriously look at the performance, aren't what you want anyway, and performance probably isn't the reason.

AFAIC if a paste does not result in significant cooling loss, the performance is not a factor. The longevity, ease of application, reactivity (chemical or mechanical etching,) and conductivity are pretty much all that matter in the end.

It's like so many of us always say when people ask about swapping paste. If you're thinking about swapping paste to solve a cooling problem, you have bigger cooling problems than paste can solve or no cooling problems at all, because you're thinking in single digit temperature deltas. Unless we're talking GPUs, some of which have had reps for bad paste/pad jobs which do hinder performance. Point is, you buy paste for consistency and reliability. It's the cooler that does the cooling.

See sig. All this paste nonsense is a great way to kill time.

i use an old SD card as a Spatula when i need one.
i also use toilet paper to clean the surface.
im not one of those people who fears the 'particles of toilet paper causing a CPU meltdown', who also happen to often be the same people as those wrist strap suckers

View attachment 191474

This wrist strap sucker killed a hard drive with polarity difference, so I wouldn't discount that all so easily.

Also... any electronics assembly line looks like this, apparently.