GPU Cooler Tested With Ketchup, Potatoes, and Cheese as Thermal Paste 35
Tom's Hardware: Finding the best TIM can be a tricky endeavor, but some people are more adventurous than others. Case in point: An enthusiast recently broadened his GPU thermal paste search to include several interesting substances ranging from regular thermal paste to thermal pads, cheese, ketchup, toothpaste, diaper rash ointment, and even potatoes. The user originally set out to test different types of thermal pads but decided to expand into other substances, making for an interesting and entertaining study in GPU cooling with some substances that are definitely not safe for long-term use. The test system used a Radeon R7 240 with a 30W TDP, with temperature readings from a five-minute run of Furmark. As such, these tests aren't a great indicator of the long-term feasibility of using a potato to cool your chip, so here's a statement of the obvious: Don't try this at home. The user shared a spreadsheet showing the findings, including 22 different tested thermal "paste" materials. The list includes several standard thermal pads of different sizes, including 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.
Several items caused the GPU to engage its thermal throttling mechanism due to overheating as the GPU hit its maximum temperature of 105C, including the sliced cheese and potato slices. Some thermal pads also didn't fare well, with throttling occurring with the EC360 Blue 0.5mm thermal pad, 0.5mm EKWB pad, Arctic TP2 1mm pad, Arctic TP2 1.5mm pad, Thermal Grizzly Minus 8 1.5mm pad copper tape. The double-sided aluminum adhesive pad was the worst offender of them all -- it caused the system to shut down. The Pentaten Creme (for diaper rashes) and copper paste were also problematic. However, the rest of the thermal applications were functional and did not cause the GPU to thermal throttle. This includes the 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 anywhere between 61C and 79C. The various different kinds of toothpaste did decently well, too, with the Amasan T12 coming out on top at 63C, Silber Wl.paste at 65C, and the plain no-named toothpaste being the worst, hitting 90C. Surprisingly, the Ketchup did exceptionally well, keeping the GPU at 71C.
Several items caused the GPU to engage its thermal throttling mechanism due to overheating as the GPU hit its maximum temperature of 105C, including the sliced cheese and potato slices. Some thermal pads also didn't fare well, with throttling occurring with the EC360 Blue 0.5mm thermal pad, 0.5mm EKWB pad, Arctic TP2 1mm pad, Arctic TP2 1.5mm pad, Thermal Grizzly Minus 8 1.5mm pad copper tape. The double-sided aluminum adhesive pad was the worst offender of them all -- it caused the system to shut down. The Pentaten Creme (for diaper rashes) and copper paste were also problematic. However, the rest of the thermal applications were functional and did not cause the GPU to thermal throttle. This includes the 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 anywhere between 61C and 79C. The various different kinds of toothpaste did decently well, too, with the Amasan T12 coming out on top at 63C, Silber Wl.paste at 65C, and the plain no-named toothpaste being the worst, hitting 90C. Surprisingly, the Ketchup did exceptionally well, keeping the GPU at 71C.
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The secret is that Szechuan Chicken McNugget Sauce will run your GPU at 4 deg K
Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Thick interfaces, even purpose-designed pads, tend to perform really poorly(albeit generally better than air, which is why they remain available for situations where very tight tolerances or high mounting forces aren't available; m.2 SSDs, RAM in particularly space-constrained laptops and tablets, that sort of thing); very thin interface layers tend to perform pretty decently; and there will normally be one 'surprising' result where some awful sounding material like ketchup or pickle juice or something is 'better' than normal thermal paste because, during a test spanning a handful of minutes, the interface material that is also cooling by evaporation of its water content does in fact shed heat faster than the one based on some polysilicone grease that's actually intended to remain stable for the service life of the system.
I'm not sure why people bother at this point.
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I'm not sure why people bother at this point.
Clickthroughs.
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Clickthroughs.
Yup, same reason why videos of people doing dumb things on YouTube get millions of views.
"We filled a pool with expanding gel beads and guess what happened next!"
Me: Uh, you now have a pool full of expanded gel beads and an ungodly mess to clean up. I don't need to watch the video to figure that out.
The rest of the internet: *clicks on stupid video*
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Clickthroughs.
Yup, same reason why videos of people doing dumb things on YouTube get millions of views.
"We filled a pool with expanding gel beads and guess what happened next!"
Me: Uh, you now have a pool full of expanded gel beads and an ungodly mess to clean up. I don't need to watch the video to figure that out. The rest of the internet: *clicks on stupid video*
I watch that video in part because I want to see how they deal with the mess. It is never fun when they don't show it.
Re: Pointless (Score:3)
Especially this one, that links to an article about the original article, with no apparent link to the original so you end up scroll back through to find it but itâ(TM)s not there.
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Yep.
We're all here, aren't we?
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I'm just here for the comments.
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Because I love the smell of burning ketchup in the morning.
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I'm not sure why people bother at this point.
We live in a clickbait world run by Hype and Bullshit where Attention Whore is now a highly paid profession for those who are masters of it.
I'm not sure why people keep asking that question when millionaires can answer it.
Re: Pointless (Score:2)
Except this case, where 1mm thermal pads performed much better than 0.5mm pads
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Bullshit by morons (Score:3)
Yes, almost anything pasty works as thermal compound short-term and if thing enough. That is not them point. The point is what it does if it is in there for a few years and maybe not all that thin in some places. Also, this stupid stunt has been done a few times before.
But Can You Cook You Food (Score:2)
On the heatsink? That is the ultimate goal here. A combo food cooker and PC will make for the complete package if we add a toilet for a desk chair.
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I guess it could be a vegan/raw diet kinda thing.
Nothing new here (Score:2)
not the metric I'm looking for (Score:2)
Call me when I can run my whole rig at 100C at full speed, then my coffeemaker that "runs on Linux" can actually run on Linux. Want to boil water for coffee? Launch a multithreaded Java app.
Finally! (Score:3)
Finally some real news for nerds on stuff that actually matters! :-)
Spock (Score:2)
Spock: "Useless. Unwiseâ¦"
Kirk: Boom! "You could have told me!!"
Now all it needs is (Score:2)
a slice of baloney!
But does it blend? (Score:2)
overheard... (Score:2)
Steve, why does your gaming tower smell like french fries?
and the result is (Score:2)
They're all garbage, and you should use thermal compound.
Arctic Silver 5 is my favorite because while it's not the absolute best it is very good, plenty cheap, and also supposed to be nonconductive. It is slightly capacitive so it can still screw up signals, but probably won't short anything to death.
I am kind of surprised the copper paste didn't work, though. Maybe it just didn't have enough copper.
Lithium Paste (Score:2)
The cheap stuff you buy at the car parts store, for brake jobs. I've been using it for decades with all sorts of CPUs and GPUs, works great!
original post (Score:2)
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