Graphite thermal pad vs paste?

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Gorilla

Supreme [H]ardness
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So I recently grabbed a 5600X to replace my 3600X. I spent a bunch of time looking through my drawers because I knew I had a new tube of Kryonaut around somewhere. Anyway, I take my water block off and discover that apparently I used an Innovation Cooling graphite pad when I built my system. I guess I won't be needing all of this isopropyl alcohol for cleanup.

Do I reuse the pad or go with the Kyronaut? I don't even remember looking up performance of the graphite pad. I don't remember buying it. It's in my amazon order history so I guess I did.
 
I’ve used the graphite pad over for at least 2 builds and have never had temp issues. Recently I went back to kryonaut just to see if I was missing out on anything, and it was maybe a degree or two cooler but nothing noticeable.
 
I don't think you'll have issues with a 65W part and a graphite pad. Paste is better, but the pad will work.
 
Pads are okay but not near as good as thermal past .. and don't re-use them. They compress when cooler is mounted. If reused this original compression can cause less heat tramsfer from CPU to cooler.
 
Gorilla said:
So I recently grabbed a 5600X to replace my 3600X. I spent a bunch of time looking through my drawers because I knew I had a new tube of Kryonaut around somewhere. Anyway, I take my water block off and discover that apparently I used an Innovation Cooling graphite pad when I built my system. I guess I won't be needing all of this isopropyl alcohol for cleanup.

Do I reuse the pad or go with the Kyronaut? I don't even remember looking up performance of the graphite pad. I don't remember buying it. It's in my amazon order history so I guess I did.
Click to expand...
In my experience, the effectiveness of the pad is very dependant upon the mounting pressure of the CPU cooler. Higher is better and coolers with convex mounting surface, have highest pressure.

However, also in my experience: The pads are not sufficient for 13th gen intel, unless you are able to undervolt a lot. For a 7700x, I could not get correct performance from a 7700x. Even with some aggressive curve optimizer settings (curve optimizer is undervolting).
 
Pads in our experience are dependent on you choosing the correct thickness if they are too thin or thick they can be an issue.

Replace with the OEM recommended thickness if possible.
 
Gorilla said:
So I recently grabbed a 5600X to replace my 3600X. I spent a bunch of time looking through my drawers because I knew I had a new tube of Kryonaut around somewhere. Anyway, I take my water block off and discover that apparently I used an Innovation Cooling graphite pad when I built my system. I guess I won't be needing all of this isopropyl alcohol for cleanup.

Do I reuse the pad or go with the Kyronaut? I don't even remember looking up performance of the graphite pad. I don't remember buying it. It's in my amazon order history so I guess I did.
Click to expand...
can re-use it.. i've re-used mine plenty of times since i typically use it for testing before fully assembling a system because i hate messing with thermal paste. that being said i'd order some thermal paste because the thermal pad is pretty meh. you'll see about a 10C drop and higher boost clocks even going with generic thermal paste.

going to bet you bought it back when most of us did around 2019 when they were dirt cheap.
 
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