Ever wondered if ketchup and toothpaste would work as a thermal solution for your CPU? Well, they do but we would not recommend using it. Not only would these “alternate” pastes dry up faster but the general heat dissipation isn’t as effective as the actual thermal paste made for your PC. But how effective can other substances be for your PC? Tom’s Hardware tested them using a Radeon R7 240 with a 30W TDP.
The site used 22 different thermal pastes on the market which are actually made for CPUs. These include the likes of the Artic TP2 0.5mm, 1mm, 1.5mm, Thermal Grizzly pads and more. But those thermal paste solutions aren’t the ones we care about here. The solutions not made for CPUs are what I am interested in. Those solutions included all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Objects such as double-sided aluminium copper tape, cheese slices, ketchup, toothpaste and even diaper rash cream.
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Of course, these household, non-thermal paste items performed a lot worse than the actual thermal paste. However, it is still interesting to see how a CPU handled the heat. The toothpaste solutions, for example, surprisingly held up well at 63C. Another toothpaste brand hit 65C. The ketchup was also decent at 71C.
Out of all the no-thermal paste items, the double-sided aluminium adhesive pad performed the worst. It maxed out the CPU temperature at 105C and caused the PC to shut down. Alongside those pads, other pastes also maxed out at 105C. These included the diaper rash cream, the cheese slice and the potato wedge. Clearly, you can’t use cheese to keep your CPU cool.
Outside of the crazy items, Tom’s Hardware did come to the conclusion that the best thermal paste used in the tests were the Arctic MX-4 and the Corsair TM30. These tests showed a 49C and a 54C result respectively. It was among the lowest of the heat.
You can read the full report on these tests here. Not only did the site use some strange things to test its CPU but it also used some thermal paste solutions which you’ll likely consider on your own PC.
Source: Tom’s Hardware
