Applying the MX-2 Thermal Compound

Enough said about the Arctic Cooling package and the thermal compound as such, time to check further and prepare our system for some compound comparison on the efficiency and performance. First we removed the stock Intel heatsink that we have been using for ages. It isn't too bad, but there are better solutions to cool our Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and that is where the Rosewill cooler comes into the story. Actually Rosewill was kind enough to send us a sample to show better figures and to be able to show the difference a bit clearer with a high performance CPU cooler. So instead of using the stock Intel heatsink we will each time use the Rosewill cooler, which features a copper base and heatpipe technology.

The Rosewill CPU cooler is labeled as excellent cooling technology, and does come with all features that you would expect these days. The base of the CPU cooler is completely made out of copper and linked to four heatpipes which lead towards the thin aluminum fins of the heatsink. On top of the heatsink, attached to the thin layer of fins you can find the fan which is running at low speed but able to push quite air through the underlying layers of fins. After having removed the stock heatsink, we cleaned up the old thermal paste so that we can apply some new thermal compound. Such cleaning is quite easy and can be done by anybody being a little bit handy, but it is essential as you can't reuse the old one.

Main Specifications

• Density: 3.69 g/cm³
• Viscosity: 2850 poise
• Net Weight: 4 g

The Arctic Silver MX-2 compound is actually build upon their previous experience with the MX-1 version, but reworked and enhanced for even better thermal conductivity. It is ideal to be used on CPU and GPU cooling and that is exactly what we have in mind. The Arctic Cooling compound hardens within a period of 200 hours and reaches thereafter its optimum performance. Because of the hardened compound, no evaporation or bleeding is possible. So the next thing to do it to apply the MX-2 thermal compound and to register the results on the temperature reported.

So, never re-use the old thermal paste as it will degrade the performance and it will have made some air bubbles within the old paste while you removed the stock heatsink. All cleaned and ready to go, our Intel Core 2 Duo is smooth and shines as being new and fresh. In our analysis of the thermal compound and more focused around the Arctic Cooling MX-2 compound we will apply each time a similar amount of paste, and this from different brands and types and compare the cooling impacts. All these results will be toothed against the newly MX-2 thermal compound.

Time to apply the thermal paste, just a thin film evenly spread is enough. This process is carried out for each compound, with an equal amount of thermal grease. After applying the compound it is spread out to a thin film covering the top of the Intel processor which will make contact with the Rosewill CPU cooler. Once done we are ready to install the CPU cooler, which will be in contact with the thermal compound and by doing so take care of the close contact between CPU and cooler. The better the thermal efficiency of the compound the better the cooling of the processor and the lower the temperature will be. And that is what it is all about, as lower temperature is better for both the life and stability of the electronic components.

The only pending action now that the thermal compound is applied is to install the processor cooling. Once the Rosewill CPU cooler sits down on the processor you can lock it down by lowering the four notches and fasten these. That's it, all locked and ready to do the job. We just connect the 4-pin power connection with our ASUS mainboard and we are ready to go. This approach we have gone through several times, with each time using a different compound. After which we installed the CPU cooler and ran our benchmarks while monitoring the temperature, and afterwards to compare the results. This will give us a good overview on the different compounds with their respective thermal efficiency.