Swapped thermal paste on my work laptop from generic white stuff to MX-4 and dropped 12 degrees under load

Was running 92C under load with that cheap gray paste that came with a kit, but after switching to MX-4 last weekend I'm sitting at 80C max and the fans barely spin up anymore, anyone else seen that big a difference between pastes?

2 comments

2 Comments

xena_williams10d ago

My buddy Dave redid his old gaming laptop with some Arctic Silver 5 (you know, the stuff that takes 200 hours to "cure") and he dropped from 95C to 81C under load. He was convinced the pump-out effect was real with the cheap stuff because after three months it was back up to 88C. He did a repaste with the same tube of MX-4 six months later and it stayed at 83C, so yeah the difference is totally real.

emma68410d agoMost Upvoted

Oh yeah, 100%. I had the same thing happen with my old laptop, swapped from some random generic paste to MX-4 and the temps dropped way more than I expected. The pump-out effect is no joke, especially with thin laptops where the heat cycles are brutal