Innovation CoolingGraphite Thermal Pad – Permanent Replacement for Thermal Paste/Grease (30 X 30 mm)

Built a system for my Mother using my prior systems parts and don't want to worry about thermal paste drying or thermal pumping out. This appears to be a permanent solution and testing has verified that it performs much more than adequate..4960x (yes....old) lapped to near mirror polishedThermalright Peerless Assasin 120 (how can something be this cheap AND this good?)EVGA RTX 2070 XC Ultra Gaming - Because Mom loves killing zombies! Uhh..no. CPU has no iGPU32GB RAM, ASUS MB, Fractal Design Pop Air caseAnyway....installation is super easy once you put tiny dabs of thermal compound on the processor corners to hold this pad in place. Without the thermal compound - it moves, period - tried 3 times and it just wouldn't stay in place no matter how careful I was. Being as this pad is the same size as the heat spreader of the CPU - had to be perfect - so...TC on the corners - done.All fans set on manual with minimum duty cycles in BIOS. Idle temperature average is 26C for all cores with a low temp of 24C - so very consistent and even. Now, when I hammer it - prime95 AND MSI Kombustor at the same time - I get CPU temps maxing at 74C - no thermal throttling, CPU at full speed at all times. Not bad at all for a marginal airflow case.Is it as cold as kryonaut extreme - no. Runs about 3-6C hotter under load - but that was also in a case that had more airflow....sooooo...?Will I have to repaste it in a year or two? NO!!! I don't see why this won't last essentially forever.This likely isn't for extreme overclockers looking for the last degree. For me though - building a system that will work without issue and I won't have to fix it (I live 1000 miles away) it's ideal.

This is amazing product. This keeps my Intel i7 9700 under the temperature of 38C. At first I thought that was too high, but after doing research it is low. Installation of the product was almost complete easy expect that because it is like a silk fabric material it would slide abit when mounting the heatsink. It had added more difficulty if you are using liquid Cooler. But once get it in place and heat sink on you are good to go. It is very thin and never was hot to touch. I had to readjust my liquid Cooler, I mounted the wrong way. and reinstalling was easy and simple. This recommended to use if you do want the mess of thermal paste on your PC. Note: This carries electricity so make sure remove power from your system dealing with it and don't let it touch any component on your motherboard.Pros:+ Inexpensive+ Lightweight+ Easy to install+ Reusable+ Cool to the touch, when removing itCons:-Little Hard to install with Liquid Cooler- Carries Electricity, so don't let touch any components when power is to your system- Only can be used one system at a time compared to paste which could have use on several systems from one tube

The thermal conductivity of these graphite pads aren't impressive when it comes to z-axis heat transfer (from the heat source to the heat sink), but they are extremely impressive when it comes to the x/y-axis heat transfer. I'm using this pad on a Ryzen 9 5950X and Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black heat sink and temps are identical to Arctic Silver 5 (20°C ambient, 32°C idle, 65°C load). I've been building PCs for over 20 years, thermal paste application is second nature to me. These pads have truly changed the game, at least in my eyes.The main benefit is for the newer Ryzen CPUs that have the CCX dies offset and not centered to the IHS. Most heat sinks are slightly concave and focus mounting pressure on the center of your CPU IHS. You can tell by putting your heat sink on a flat surface and see if it spins freely. These pads help transfer the heat from the sides of the IHS to the heat sink better than paste would.Stating the obvious here, these pads are reusable and require no cleaning after using them. They make testing heat sinks (and AIOs) so much easier since there is no thermal paste to clean up afterwards. They are safe to use on the IHS as well as the bare die if you want to use it on a GPU.I won't say it's perfect... because it's not. These pads have a specific use case scenario. While they do have a good thermal conductivity, that rating goes down the higher the temps get. As such, this pad will NOT perform as good as thermal paste if you're constantly running +85°C temps, making it a terrible choice if you are overclocking. I personally only use the PBO settings on my AMD CPUs and it handles the heat load just fine.I bought this from my local Microcenter because I was sick of wasting thermal paste when swapping between CPUs (troubleshooting). When I saw how great the temps were, I bought the two-pack from Amazon to make the swap on other machines too. Great stuff, I just wish I bought into it sooner.