Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut - 5 Gram - High Performance Liquid Metal Compound Thermal Paste for Superior CPU/GPU/Console Cooling - Made in Germany

TL;DR:AMD Threadripper 2950x paired with Corsair H115i Platinum RGB water cooler, 'balanced' fan mode speed (~1100 rpm) on radiator. Corsair OEM, pre-applied thermal paste - idle 104F, load 157F. Conductonaut applied - idle 98F, load 149F; both tests 10-15 minutes of Prime95.MAIN REVIEW:I have the AMD Threadripper 2950x 16c/32t paired with the Corsair H115i Platinum RGB cooler. The 2 Corsair fans on the radiator are spinning at ~1100rpm each. My typical workload consists of running 2 Windows VMs simultaneously on a Windows 10 host. I initially used the pre-set thermal paste from Corsair pre-applied to the copper-block and idle averaged ~104F. Disassembled, cleaned, and added the Conductonaut and now seeing idle temps average 98F, with temps dipping as low as 89F. Room ambient temperature is 72F.Threw up some Prime95 testing and prior with the stock thermal paste, I hit 157F after 10 minutes. After 10 minutes with the Conductonaut, maxed out at 149F. Both radiator fans were spinning at 1260rpm, pump at 2420rpm; the fans were set at a 'performance' level of 'Balanced' within the iCUE software. I set the performance-mode for the fans at 'Extreme', they both started spinning at ~2150 rpms. After 5 minute the temp bounced between 141 and 143F. For the last 3 minutes, temp hit and sat at 149F. The CPU of all cores was bouncing between 3650 and 3700 MHz. iCUE reported the water temp at 30.8C. For another 5 minutes I let Prime95 continue running. Temps did not change.For anyone who has ever messed with Gallium in its liquid form will know what to expect from messing with Conductonaut. Try to pinch Gallium (or Conductonaut) in your hand and it'll just pop out the side...the same thing will happen when you assemble your heatsink base to the CPU block; which there is a reason the instructions say "apply a pin-drop" and [try] to spread it out. Put too much on and it'll spit out the sides! Don't put your heatsink on slowly and it can actually splatter out the sides as well. Take your time and be patient while trying to spread the liquid metal around - it will naturally glob-up and stick to the supplied Q-tip at times. Try your best.For a little pin-hole application, the results can be quite impressive! For my system, I do not plan to de-lid anything (no point for the CPU since AMD uses Indium solder between dies and heatsink). What I get out of this are some degrees cooler temps running and also longevity, not having to re-apply thermal solutions every few years due to the thermal solution drying up and/or losing its thermal conductivity efficiency over time.THINGS TO CONSIDER:Use the supplied Q-tip to spread the liquid metal around the heatsink as it's quite compacted unlike regular Q-tips that give off some fibers.A teeny-tiny application goes a long way! Also, make use of the additional supplied adapter-tip to suck up any excess application.Keep the plunger open-end and pointed up until it is over where you will be applying it. The liquid metal can fall out and splatter all over, even a little droplet!The liquid metal is very reflective and shiny. Try to examine afterwards with a flashlight after the heatsink is applied if any of the application plopped out the sides - I was able to see a shiny reflection just under the heatsink that I sucked up and cleaned (before plugging and turning system on).Be careful when moving your computer chassis. Any excess that is not spotted and cleaned up could fall and bounce around in your chassis during transportation.Wear latex/nitrile gloves if you mind your hands staining; if you get some liquid metal on your hands they'll be gray for a little bit.

To get one thung out of the way, LM is *NOT* a silver bullet that will solve your cooling woes in most cases. Realistically, outside of some specific edge cases I’ll get imto later you can expect a small reduction in average temperatures (in my experience usually somewhere in the realm of 2-7C on GPUs. I don’t use it on CPUs because it stains the IHS and makes it look ugly) and a slightly larger but still small decrease in hotspot temperatures. There are some exceptions to this ruler, however:1) AMD Rx 6000 series reference coolersif you, like me, were unfortunate enough to think that replacing the carbon thermal pad the GPU core comes with out of the factory with ordinary paste would help, then this is a solid solution to the absurd temperature problems you’re probably dealing with right now. Seriously, I went from 87C edge 115C juntion temp on my Rx 6800 with Kryonaut paste to maxing out in the mid 80’C on junction temp after using LM - and that’s with a vastly higher power limit to boot.2) Very high thermal density chipsif you have a component that outputs a LOT of heat in a very small area then it can be very hard to adequately transfer that heat away. LM can help woth this over regular paste. A good example would be something like a delidded Ryzen 7 5800x. A chip like this would benefit from liquid metal, although unless delidded the IHS will prove to be a limiting factor.3) Very high power consumptionI have an RTX 2080 ti that pulls up to 850w when under load. Paste works, but goodness me does it sometimes struggle when power consumption stays high instead of spiking. LM helps a lot here.For pretty much every other possible use case it’s simply not worth it. Although more thermally conductive than paste, don’t be fooled by the w/mk figure on various paste. The way this is calculated makes it extremely manipulatable, and in fact Thermal Grizzly has made statements about this. They themselves manipulate this number on their products, although in fairness to them all of their competitors do too, so at least they’re honest about it. Aside from that, there are some pretty serious downsides too:1) Electrically conductiveif this stuff gets on running SMDs then you can say goodbye to whatever that component the SMD is on.2) CorrosiveLM alloys contains lots of gallium, which will eat away at some metals, notably alluminum and tin. what this means is that if you use this on an alluminum cooler, the gallium will alloy itself to the cooler and destroy the structure of the cooler. Not great. Also, if a little bit lands on a PCB and manages to not short something out, you can bet money that it’ll eat its way through a solder joint and once again, bye bye component.3) StainingThis will stain copper and nickle. Not a deal breaker, just ugly. Also, copper in particular is a pain to clean off, as the LM will bond to it leaving small bumps. These can be scraped off, but it’s time consuming and not much fun.4) ExpensiveThis is probably the most obvious one. If you don’t need LM for your usecase, you can spend less money and probably get more paste at the same time. Personally I’m partial to Thermal Grizzly Aeronaut, but just about any well known paste will do you just fine. I believe many of Noctua’s pastes are usually quite well priced.In conclusion, if you know you need LM then you probably already know all of this and are going to get it anyway. If you don’t, then you should probably just get some Kryonaut or whatever and call it a day.