Paste is the better solution here. While I agree a pad is a lot easy to put on, it’s not as effective as paste in this Application.
Thermal paste is designed to fill in the unevenness of the two surfaces at the micron level, between the raw chip and the copper plate of the heat sink.
The effectiveness is the distance between the two is the issue, paste creates an ultra thin layer unlike the pad which is about .30 mm of thickness.
In desktop systems like iMac’s we use thermal pads between the VRAM chips and the heat sink. We still use thermal paste on the CPU and GPU chips. The reason here is the elevation of the two chips to the heat sink we need to use a thermal pads between or a special gapping paste (which is not as good as the pad).
=== Update (01/05/25) ===
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To help you see how a good thermal paste is still better than thermal pads take a look at this
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To help you see how a good thermal paste is still better than thermal pads take a look at this. The top is the paste and the lower the bar the better.
Paste is the better solution here. While I agree a pad is a lot easy to put on, it’s not as effective as paste in this Application.
Thermal paste is designed to fill in the unevenness of the two surfaces at the micron level, between the raw chip and the copper plate of the heat sink.
The effectiveness is the distance between the two is the issue, paste creates an ultra thin layer unlike the pad which is about .30 mm of thickness.
In desktop systems like iMac’s we use thermal pads between the VRAM chips and the heat sink. We still use thermal paste on the CPU and GPU chips. The reason here is the elevation of the two chips to the heat sink we need to use a thermal pads between or a special gapping paste (which is not as good as the pad).
=== Update (01/05/25) ===
-
-
To help you see how a good thermal paste is still better than a thermal pads take a look at this
+
To help you see how a good thermal paste is still better than thermal pads take a look at this
Paste is the better solution here. While I agree a pad is a lot easy to put on, it’s not as effective as paste in this Application.
Thermal paste is designed to fill in the unevenness of the two surfaces at the micron level, between the raw chip and the copper plate of the heat sink.
The effectiveness is the distance between the two is the issue, paste creates an ultra thin layer unlike the pad which is about .30 mm of thickness.
In desktop systems like iMac’s we use thermal pads between the VRAM chips and the heat sink. We still use thermal paste on the CPU and GPU chips. The reason here is the elevation of the two chips to the heat sink we need to use a thermal pads between or a special gapping paste (which is not as good as the pad).
+
+
=== Update (01/05/25) ===
+
+
To help you see how a good thermal paste is still better than a thermal pads take a look at this
Paste is the better solution here. While I agree a pad is a lot easy to put on, it’s not as effective as paste in this Application.
Thermal paste is designed to fill in the unevenness of the two surfaces at the micron level, between the raw chip and the copper plate of the heat sink.
The effectiveness is the distance between the two is the issue, paste creates an ultra thin layer unlike the pad which is about .30 mm of thickness.
In desktop systems like iMac’s we use thermal pads between the VRAM chips and the heat sink. We still use thermal paste on the CPU and GPU chips. The reason here is the elevation of the two chips to the heat sink we need to use a thermal pads between or a special gapping paste (which is not as good as the pad).