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XxXxX · Jan 26, 2025

this is what i use instead of thermal paste ..

IC Graphite High Compression Thermal Pad - Permanent Replacement for Thermal Paste/Grease (40X40mm 5-Pack)

Amazon.co.uk

you can cut them to size, as they are conductive, fit them and forget about them and they seem to work at keeping the CPU cool.
best of luck, Steve ..

Scannerman · Jan 26, 2025

I've seen comparisons to thermal paste. Have the pads improved any?

XxXxX · Jan 26, 2025

Scannerman said:
I've seen comparisons to thermal paste. Have the pads improved any?

mine and the wife’s system runs very quite and very cool with these fitted and i dont have to worry about removing and replacing any heat sink again.
i have used 2 out of the pack of 5 and will keep the other 3 stored away if they are needed for any other computer in the house.

best of luck, Steve ..

Scannerman · Jan 26, 2025

Thanks. I'll look into it!

XxXxX · Jan 26, 2025

Scannerman said:
Thanks. I'll look into it!

just remember they are electrically conductive so cut them to size, carefully.
i use a bit of paste, a very tiny bit, on top of the CPU so when i place the thermal sheet it stays in place when replacing the heat sink.
then its forget about them until a new computer is required, they work very well, not cheap but its a one off purchase.
best of luck, Steve ..

abactuon · Jan 26, 2025

Chef Duane said:
load test

Run some game and for example Nvidia FrameView or Gpu-Z, Sensors tab.

Scannerman · Jan 26, 2025

This looks interesting.

abactuon · Jan 26, 2025

bobkn said:
Interesting. The enthusiast pastes I'm familiar with didn't test the best, as regards thermal conductivity. I'm not sure that's the appropriate criterion for the best paste. (A thin coating is wanted.)

Using the viscous ones may require caution. I forget which one I used that was more glue-like than I was accustomed to. Ripped the CPU right out of its socket when I was changing heatsinks. Didn't do nice things to the AMD CPU's pins.

For the laptop, I used Thermalright TF8. But the laptop was configured to keep the CPU/GPU from getting hotter than 70°C(158°F), so it's hard to say anything definite.
For the desktop I used Arctic MX4, although there was ID_COOLING FROST X25 paste with the cooler, but I thought it was worse.
I'll try it maybe another time. But I have a cold CPU and FROST X25 thermal paste, not FROST X45.

What Is the Best Thermal Paste Pattern? Actual Performance Comparison — Kooling Monster

Discover the optimal thermal paste pattern for peak performance in this detailed comparative study of application methods.

koolingmonster.com

Win711 · Jan 26, 2025

Are you guys insinuating that thermal paste needs to be replaced after some time?

I used whatever was already on my cooler. I'd hate to have to take that apart again one day but I suppose water coolers wouldn't last forever.

Scannerman · Jan 26, 2025

Win711 said:
Are you guys insinuating that thermal paste needs to be replaced after some time?

I used whatever was already on my cooler. I'd hate to have to take that apart again one day but I suppose water coolers wouldn't last forever.

I rarely replace thermal paste unless I'm doing a major overhaul on a PC or rebuilding and upgrading a PC for a client. I have noticed a 2-3 degree decrease in cooling efficiency after 3 - 5 years but it just doesn't strike me as worth ripping my PC apart to bring it back down. I'm not a big fan on liquid cooling. I'll do it for someone else if they insist, but I find a good Noctua will suffice even under load 99% of the time. Anything beyond that puts me in the realm of competitive over clocking and although I will OC my own PCs I don't do it competitively. If you can get an extra half G you're doing good. If you can get an extra G (stable) you're doing great. I'm doing okay.

Win711 · Jan 26, 2025

Scannerman said:
I rarely replace thermal paste unless I'm doing a major overhaul on a PC or rebuilding and upgrading a PC for a client. I have noticed a 2-3 degree decrease in cooling efficiency after 3 - 5 years but it just doesn't strike me as worth ripping my PC apart to bring it back down. I'm not a big fan on liquid cooling. I'll do it for someone else if they insist, but I find a good Noctua will suffice even under load 99% of the time. Anything beyond that puts me in the realm of competitive over clocking and although I will OC my own PCs I don't do it competitively. If you can get an extra half G you're doing good. If you can get an extra G (stable) you're doing great. I'm doing okay.

To show how little I knew, I thought the cpu would come with a fan when I bought like all cpus used to lol, and couldn't figure out what was going on when I searched for cpu fans as none seemed offered. I researched and discovered this cpu almost certainly needs water cooling, although a couple really fancy air coolers might work. So it delayed my build since I had to research water coolers then wait for one to arrive. And whatever goop that was stuck to the bottom of it is what I used. I figured with water cooling and the cpu plate I'm miles ahead of air cooling so it doesn't matter.

Scannerman · Jan 26, 2025

Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-14900K is a beast of a CPU. You could probably get by with an NH-D15 on that but you wouldn't set any records. I wouldn't even recommend any serious over clocking with air cooling on that CPU and the last thing I would do is let the UEFI "optimize" the settings given all the publicity surrounding that platform. It freaking knows no limits! I also noticed you didn't goof up like I did and get a 4K monitor. Good job!

*correction* You did get a 4K monitor, but you also got a 2K monitor if I'm reading right.

Win711 · Jan 26, 2025

Scannerman said:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-14900K is a beast of a CPU. You could probably get by with an NH-D15 on that but you wouldn't set any records. I wouldn't even recommend any serious over clocking with air cooling on that CPU and the last thing I would do is let the UEFI "optimize" the settings given all the publicity surrounding that platform. It freaking knows no limits! I also noticed you didn't goof up like I did and get a 4K monitor. Good job! *correction* You did get a 4K monitor, but you also got a 2K monitor if I'm reading right.

I'm actually having to underclock from 5.7ghz to 5.4ghz or else avidemux crashes because it gets too hot. If not for avidemux it would run fine on 5.7. Maybe faster idk. I don't consider it stable unless it can do 2-pass h264 encoding at a high bitrate and 50 frame lookahead without crashing.

I need to do a lot of bios tweaking since everything is still set to "auto" as it came.

I have a 4k 43inch but my display is set on 2k. What do you mean "goof up"? What do I have in my specs? I may have had a 1080 40 inch monitor when I made my specs. That was definitely a goof up lol

Scannerman · Jan 26, 2025

Win711 said:
I'm actually having to underclock from 5.7ghz to 5.4ghz or else avidemux crashes because it gets too hot. If not for avidemux it would run fine on 5.7. Maybe faster idk. I don't consider it stable unless it can do 2-pass h264 encoding at a high bitrate and 50 frame lookahead without crashing.

I need to do a lot of bios tweaking since everything is still set to "auto" as it came.

I have a 4k 43inch but my display is set on 2k. What do you mean "goof up"? What do I have in my specs? I may have had a 1080 40 inch monitor when I made my specs. That was definitely a goof up lol

View attachment 123300

I got a Samsung 4K monitor and everything is too teeny tiny. If I change the settings it messes up and starts complaining. Then my KVM starts to give me trouble so I have to leave it on 4K. It's annoying. Yeah, you know you have a beast of a CPU when you have to dial it down from 6 GHz :winkt:

. For a while Intel was blaming motherboard manufacturers because they would optimize right out of the box and burn out those CPUs before the end user had a chance to dial down the settings or get a better cooler. I'm glad it worked out okay for you. I mean, 5.4 GHz is stellar. GIGABYTE has really pulled up the lead these past few years too!

Win711 · Jan 26, 2025

Scannerman said:
I got a Samsung 4K monitor and everything is too teeny tiny. If I change the settings it messes up and starts complaining. Then my KVM starts to give me trouble so I have to leave it on 4K. It's annoying. Yeah, you know you have a beast of a CPU when you have to dial it down from 6 GHz . For a while Intel was blaming motherboard manufacturers because they would optimize right out of the box and burn out those CPUs before the end user had a chance to dial down the settings or get a better cooler. I'm glad it worked out okay for you. I mean, 5.4 GHz is stellar. GIGABYTE has really pulled up the lead these past few years too!

Why can't you set it to the resolution I have? As long as you keep it 16:9 it should scale the same.

Yeah 4k is WAY too teeny tiny! I think I had 300% scaling with 4k. Even 2k is a lot of room.

Gigabyte has always been a good board for me. The pc I built in 2011 has this board GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 (rev. 1.0) Overview | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global With a quad core 3.6ghz. That pc has been a monument of stability. Never had a crash except when I upgraded from 8 to 16 gb ram without turning off the interleaving. I had to reset the bios to get it to boot. But other than that it's super fast even by today's standards.

This time I got 4 sticks ram as a matched set so I can interleave without problems (allegedly.... haven't tried yet). That was the mistake I made in the past. I don't know why I didn't get 16gb when I built it, but didn't want to make the same mistake again. I also should have gotten the i7 instead of i5. Didn't want to make that mistake again either, so I got the i9.

The pc may seem fast now but in 15 years everyone will say it's a dog lol

Scannerman · Jan 26, 2025

Win711 said:
The pc may seem fast now but in 15 years everyone will say it's a dog lol

I don't doubt it. I remember when I first built my X99 and thought it was hot stuff. Didn't take long before it went from sweet to mediocre to archaic. It still suits me though and I like work stations because I'm not really a hard core gamer. The missuz uses Z series and I use X series. It just sort of worked out that way.

Oh, right. Adjusting to 2K. I can do it but then I have to fix everything on my display after ward. I wouldn't mind that so much if my KVM wouldn't keep telling me my settings were wrong. Eventually it won't even display the screen and will keep giving me an error message. I could buy a different KVM and see if it wasn't the monitor and I did do this so either it's the monitor or the cables and I'm done with looking for cables that work with this KVM. I'll just roll with the punches.

Win711 · Jan 26, 2025

Scannerman said:
I don't doubt it. I remember when I first built my X99 and thought it was hot stuff. Didn't take long before it went from sweet to mediocre to archaic. It still suits me though and I like work stations because I'm not really a hard core gamer. The missuz uses Z series and I use X series. It just sort of worked out that way.

Oh, right. Adjusting to 2K. I can do it but then I have to fix everything on my display after ward. I wouldn't mind that so much if my KVM wouldn't keep telling me my settings were wrong. Eventually it won't even display the screen and will keep giving me an error message. I could buy a different KVM and see if it wasn't the monitor and I did do this so either it's the monitor or the cables and I'm done with looking for cables that work with this KVM. I'll just roll with the punches.

What is KVM? I have a DP to HDMI cable 10ft long that has 8k printed on it coming from the onboard graphics. I'm not a gamer so didn't think I needed a card.

I think these newer builds will last longer than the older ones. My first build was a dual cpu iwill board with two 1.33ghz tualatin cpus. It was nothing but trouble since the hardware couldn't really coordinate 2 cpus and the software couldn't multithread. I ended up running just one cpu and it was fast for about 5 years, then I went to AMD and got burned, then my 2011 build that is still fast today. So I think this one I'm on now will be adequate for at least 20 years, especially since it's so overbuilt to start with.

Here's the ram VENGEANCE® 128GB (4x32GB) DDR5 DRAM 5600MT/S CL40 Memory Kit — Black

Interleaving makes a big difference from what I remember. It may be the best OC thing you could do, but the ram sticks have to be identical.

Scannerman · Jan 26, 2025

Win711 said:
What is KVM? I have a DP to HDMI cable 10ft long that has 8k printed on it coming from the onboard graphics. I'm not a gamer so didn't think I needed a card.

I think these newer builds will last longer than the older ones. My first build was a dual cpu iwill board with two 1.33ghz tualatin cpus. It was nothing but trouble since the hardware couldn't really coordinate 2 cpus and the software couldn't multithread. I ended up running just one cpu and it was fast for about 5 years, then I went to AMD and got burned, then my 2011 build that is still fast today. So I think this one I'm on now will be adequate for at least 20 years, especially since it's so overbuilt to start with.

Here's the ram VENGEANCE® 128GB (4x32GB) DDR5 DRAM 5600MT/S CL40 Memory Kit — Black

Interleaving makes a big difference from what I remember. It may be the best OC thing you could do, but the ram sticks have to be identical.

lol You remind me of myself. I built a gaming rig that I never use because I built so many for others I thought I'd build one for yours truly just because. It's been sitting on my desk for the past 6 months unused. The irony is that it's supposed to support Win 11 whereas this work station does not.

I tend to lean toward Intel platforms but I've built my fair share of AMD platforms as well. Even my gaming rig is AMD but I tend to always gravitate back to Intel. It's just been my personal experience that I get a smoother ride with Intel builds and I've been building PCs for at least 22 years. It really is all about user preference.

So let me see if I've go this right: You own a high performance bleeding edge state of the art PC with 128 GB of RAM clocking @ 5.4 GHz stable on the CPU. Indubitably, you're running NVMe and evidently you're running high performance RAM as well BUT . . . You're not a gamer. Are you a developer? And if so, why didn't you get a Work Station instead if you want all that band width? What EVER do you use it for?

What is a KVM switch

Win711 · Jan 26, 2025

Scannerman said:
I tend to lean toward Intel platforms but I've built my fair share of AMD platforms as well. Even my gaming rig is AMD but I tend to always gravitate back to Intel. It's just been my personal experience that I get a smoother ride with Intel builds and I've been building PCs for at least 22 years. It really is all about user preference.

I got an AMD desktop in 2009 and it ran hot, slow, buggy. It was awful. Then I got an AMD laptop around 2015 and same thing: hot, slow, buggy. I had to mount a fan on the table the laptop sits on that blows up into the cpu on the bottom of the laptop, and then I had to reduce the power to 99% in the power options just to use the laptop.

After getting burned by AMD twice I said never again. Maybe they are different now, idk, but I can't take the chance.

Scannerman said:
So let me see if I've go this right: You own a high performance bleeding edge state of the art PC with 128 GB of RAM clocking @ 5.4 GHz stable on the CPU. Indubitably, you're running NVMe and evidently you're running high performance RAM as well BUT . . . You're not a gamer. Are you a developer? And if so, why didn't you get a Work Station instead if you want all that band width? What EVER do you use it for?

I got it for video conversion and so it will still be fast 20 years from now because I don't want to have to ever build another one. I'm getting too old to learn all the new stuff. It wasn't that expensive... maybe $3000? I could have saved a few bucks here and there but like I said about my last build I wish I had gotten the best instead of the middle.

Scannerman · Jan 26, 2025

Win711 said:
I got an AMD desktop in 2009 and it ran hot, slow, buggy. It was awful. Then I got an AMD laptop around 2015 and same thing: hot, slow, buggy. I had to mount a fan on the table the laptop sits on that blows up into the cpu on the bottom of the laptop, and then I had to reduce the power to 99% in the power options just to use the laptop.

After getting burned by AMD twice I said never again. Maybe they are different now, idk, but I can't take the chance.

I got it for video conversion and so it will still be fast 20 years from now because I don't want to have to ever build another one. I'm getting too old to learn all the new stuff. It wasn't that expensive... maybe $3000? I could have saved a few bucks here and there but like I said about my last build I wish I had gotten the best instead of the middle.

Okay, I got it. Video rendering. Well, you definitely have the hardware to handle that. You may wish to complete that build with a high end GPU at some point but if you're happy with what you have it would probably be best to just save up for the ultimate card. Yeah, it really took AMD a while to give Intel any real competition IMO and my experience with AMD has been much the same as yours. I have to say they definitely broke the ice with ThreadRipper but TR is also known for thermal issues. Still, AMD did pick up the slack with Ryzen and got progressively better. Even my Ryzen 7X 8 core still doesn't work nearly as smoothly as my Intel i7K 8 core CPU which is considerably older. (To be fair my 6900K is in the Intel X category.) IMO AMD still needs to pull up their game before they can really get ahead of Intel. It's an old argument. To rebuild my work station so that it can legitimately support Win 11 would cost me around the same price point you refer to and I have to ask myself if Win 11 is worth shelling out 3K for. Frankly, I don't think it is. Probably better off keeping my rogue OS and booting back to Win 7 for old time's sake. I'm getting too old for this and Microsoft needs to grow up all over again.

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