Kryonaut is no longer my favourite Thermal Paste

[RealBlackStuff]

For quite a while I have recommended Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut as THE thermal paste to use.
However, lately I am experiencing a lot of degradation on several of my laptops.
E.g. only last week did I refresh my X230's paste and temperatures were very good.
BUT only for about a few days!
My wife uses this X230 and she does a fair bit of online stuff, many of them Facebook Instantgames.
Those seem to eat up a lot of energy and cause temperatures in the 60s and 70s C.
Looking into possible causes, I discovered that the main reasons are the often uneven fitting and low mounting pressure of laptop heatsinks on the CPU.
Another cause of concern is the viscosity of the paste.
For "ill-fitting" heatsinks, such as found on many laptops, a lower viscosity paste fills up any gaps better than higher viscosity pastes, such as e.g. Thermal Grizzly's Hydronaut and Kryonaut.

Based on the above I've been hunting around for an alternative and, greatly helped by the folks on http://forum.notebookreview.com/ and https://www.hwcooling.net/, I went for Phobya NanoGrease Extreme.
Ordered it from Amazon UK, but it was shipped from a company just outside of Bordeaux/France.
Should be here in a few days.
Once I get it, I'll refresh the X230 and report back.

PS: Diving deeper into Kryonaut, it seems to lose its effectiveness once it gets to 80 C, and it won't come back when temps are lower again!

[axur-delmeria]

On laptop CPUs I don't use the "center dot" method, but spread the paste as much as I can.

Maybe Thermal Grizzly Aeronaut could work? It's less viscous compared to Kryonaut.

Also, is it newly-bought paste, or is it old stock? Some say pastes degrade over time, so you shouldn't hold on to them for too long-- well, that's true for the Noctua NT-H1 I had, which is now so dry it doesn't want to go out of the syringe.

Maybe I should play around by wetting it with a drop of mineral oil and using it on a spare laptop (probably the Inspiron 1525 with the bad LCD).

That aside, keep us informed of your findings!

[Cigarguy]

Interesting observation RBS. For my laptops I still use the old tried and true AS 5 or MX 4. Mainly because I have lots of these around, know what they do and are used on systems that responds well to them.

I still do a lot of tinkering and overclocking just for fun. For these I've used the more expensive and newer TIM including Kryonaut. These OCed components don't stay overclocked/stressed long enough for me to notice any long term affects. In the short term the newer super pastes do perform better thus allowing slightly higher overclocks on some though not all components.

[badman9]

I'm really interested in this thread, since I just redid my T430s with the Kyronaut (bought because it was supposedly the best) but haven't really seen any benefit to the temps of note 2 weeks later. I usually use AS mx-4 on desktops (since you get a lot more paste for the price), but for my thinkpad I needed the absolute best to try to solve this thermal issue discussed here (viewtopic.php?f=68&t=131197)

I admit the TG Kyro was a bit harder to work with in terms of viscosity, but I used the spreader to get a nice thin even coat across the die, (since centre dot won't really work on a rectangular die). I'm wondering if maybe I should have gone thicker with the paste (which is counter to what i've always been told).

[axur-delmeria]

I'm wondering if maybe I should have gone thicker with the paste (which is counter to what i've always been told).

No. Just no. The combination of the paste's high viscosity and the heatsink's low mounting pressure means there'll be a thick layer of paste between the heatsink and processor.

My experience with Kryonaut has been less than stellar TBH. Maybe I got a bad batch, or old stock: in the first few applications, it was a bit light bluish, but now it's dark gray-- it's as though the different components of the paste had separate and settled.

[Eugor]

Looking into possible causes, I discovered that the main reasons are the often uneven fitting and low mounting pressure of laptop heatsinks on the CPU.

Do you know if there is a fix for the low mounting pressure of the heatsinks ? Could thin washers be used to keep the heatsink screws from bottoming out before good pressure is achieved ?

[RealBlackStuff]

Nowadays most (laptop-)heatsinks have 4 screws with small springs in them, where you can only screw the screws to a specific 'depth'.
After that, only the pressure of those springs holds the heatsink in place.
You'd need to remove those 'spring-loaded' screws and replace them with 'straight' screws without springs, that fit freely in the mounting bracket under the CPU.
BUT, then it is entirely up to you to evenly tighten those 4 screws and NOT overdo it anywhere.
Plus you'd need to use e.g. Loctite to keep those screws from becoming undone.



As for the above Phobya NanoGrease Extreme, I found it was rather difficult to apply when you first try it OOTB.
It was too 'tough' and 'dry' to try and spread it on the CPU surface.
So, you should first put the tube in a sealed plastic baggie, which you then put in warm water of about 65 C/150 F.
Leave it in for a few minutes, after that the paste is a lot more 'fluid' and easier to apply.
I tried both the spreading and the blob method, both worked equally good (at least for me).
In both cases, the quantity needed (for a laptop CPU) was the same, namely the size of: 2 rice corns or 1 lentil.