I've always used Arctic Silver because that's the only brand I knew until today.
Arctic Silver was just popular, affordable, and always seemed better than the stock paste that the manufacturer of the cooling device packaged w/their products. Then after watching dozens of video reviews and reading posts w/benchmarks I decided to try a brand that with a bit more expensive but had great reviews.
So in comparison, I think Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut is working as the majority has reviewed positively for it. I noticed my temps on my CPU & now water cooled GPU drop a few degrees C and when you're trying to push your tech to its limits, if I can shave off 2-3 degrees C here and there by spending a little bit more on premium products it all adds up for the better.
This particular item is likely good for 3-4 applications, I've used it for 2 so far and I know I can squeeze another pea sized bead for sure, maybe even 2. I didn't use the plastic applicator since that's just not how I spread the paste.
Packaging: thermal paste, plastic applicator, and instructions are packaged in a small foil and air tight sealed bag. Think drink pouch but smaller.
5 stars. The paste is working as expected Yes, I'd recommend this to a friend and buy it again.
Pro: Seems to be performing better than stock paste & previously applied Arctic Silver. (wish it came with a logo sticker)
Con: it does cost a few dollars more than the ever popular Arctic Silver brand.
Easily spread
Excellent thermal performance (right there with Gelid GC Extreme and Prolimatek PK-3) with one REALLY important difference**
Easy to clean up
The only con is price, but you do get what you pay for. That said, you won't need to keep around two or more kinds of pastes. See more below about why that is...
** Different thermal pastes are often better at either higher pressure or lower pressure mounting environments (water vs. air cooler for example) where clamping forces demonstrate how different pastes behave. This paste (Kryonaut) is best at BOTH which is unusual. This makes it very convenient since I only utilize Kryonaut nowadays regardless of clamping pressure.
I just spent the last hour detailing and cleaning my GPU. (EVGA Geforce GTX 970 FTW+ Edition)
Took it totally apart and scrubbed cleaned everything w/ 91% rubbing alcohol, air duster and a new paint brush (additional dusting) for the finishing touches. Did all the back and mid plates, heatsink, mainboard, fans, cleaned off the old thermal compound and reapplied some of this new Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut compound.
Pre cleaning temps:
22 degrees Celsius ambient room temperature
50 degrees Celsius at idle
91 degrees Celsius at load (100% fan)
The GPU was getting so hot, I lost almost 200mhz on my boost clock, since I was hitting the thermal limits and underclocking itself.
Post cleaning/detailing + Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut: (finger spread method + spatula to smooth it out)
22 degrees Celsius ambient room temperature
33 degrees Celsius at idle
59 degrees Celsius at load (60% fan)
Plus I've gained my boost clock back and I can now overclock this thing once again.
Runs cooler than when I had it brand new out of the box straight from the factory. (If I remember correctly, it was running around 70-75 degrees Celsius at load brand new)
Suffice to say, I was not expecting the results to be this positive. Granted it was filthy, full of dust bunnies and the factory thermal compound was toast.
The only slight negative I could maybe say about this stuff, is it's slightly harder to work with. Definitely a bit thicker and harder to spread vs stuff like Artic Silver or IC Diamond. But still only took me a minute or two to apply it.
All in all, couldn't be happier!
:edit:
As others have mentioned in the comments, a lot of my temps drops were likely due to the cleaning, which is fair. Sadly I didn't do a controlled experiment with just cleaning to know for sure. But I will say the stock thermal paste on this thing was cracker dry and toast. But to what degree either had on the end result I can't say for sure.
I used Artic Silver and its successors from 2000 until I switched out to Arctic MX-4 for daily use . I made that switch because AS5 couldn't handle the GTX580s. After the stock TIM failed on my 4 580s in 2 years of usage I repasted with AS5 and within weeks my temps would creep up again. So I researched, gave MX-4 the nod and all was good until my Alienware 17r4 with a GTX1080 and the intel i7-7820HK, Due in no small part to the iffy and well documented tension system the stock thermal compound just wasn't sufficient, let alone acceptable out of the box. SO I used a fresh tube of the MX-4 and about a year after, I started seeing microstuttering, sidebanding lag, and thermal problems in general worsen from initial onset over a month. That Kyronaut had had some time on the market since I bought this laptop I decided to order it up and utry it out. The temps I am seeing are easily superior to MX-4 new and settled in. Provided this stuff holds up over time it will be my defacto paste. The performance is great and the applicability is not particularly problematic. Good for any one with gumption and hands to build their own or willing to repaste a laptop/PS/GPU.
What is with this huge thermal conductivity? It's eerie. Apparently the highest for any non-liquid-metal TIM. I can believe it too with the temperature drops I'm getting.
Got conductonaut between the die and IHS, and this stuff between the IHS and heat sink. Lost like 25-30 degrees. Granted I was using a really low-profile cooler in a very small mini ITX case, so it wasn't great to begin with. But still. Intel has obviously messed up with this de-lidding business. You should never be able to get a whole 30 degrees celsius off a chip with just a fan. That's like liquid nitrogen territory. Intel broke it, and thermal grizzly fixed it!
I went ahead and put the rest of the kryonaut on the GPU, some LCD controllers I had lying around that got hot, my raspberry pi...
Feature Product
- TG-K-001-RS
Description
TG-K-001-RS
Keeps my Threadripper 1950x nice and cool paired with the Enermax TR4 LiqTech 360 AIO cooler. Prime95 and Handbrake really don't see it pass 60C. I used the HUGE BLOB method, with minimum spreading along where the modules beneath the lid are located.
THOUGH, A WARNING... the size of the 1950x Threadripper, being HUGE, means you WILL HAVE TO USE THE WHOLE TUBE. So DO NOT MESS UP, or you will be throwing $11 down the drain.
Hands down the best thermal compound I've used. When I originally built my budget build computer about three years ago I used whatever came with my FX8350 Black Edition CPU. I decided recently to give the computer a good thorough cleaning and had read many good reviews of the Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. When I applied the compound and reinstalled my Hyper 212 Evo heatsink, I was definitely not disappointed. Temperatures dropped 5-10 degrees from where the were before (at least according to Hardware Monitor, could probably give or take a few degrees). I noticed a immediate improvement in performance as well, not a huge improvement, but noticeable. I have to wonder if dropping the temps fixed some kind of throttling I didn't know I had going on. GTA V was stuttering at times for me, and the stuttering has gone away. I can now play the game on high-ultra settings and in 1920x1080 resolution at a smooth 60fps without issue.
This is an excellent product. I don' know what they do differently from the other thermal compounds on the market but this made a noticeable difference for me, and even increased performance which I wasn't expecting. Highly recommend this product.
If I might add though, don't use the spatula to spread the paste. This paste is far too thick and is difficult to spread. You are much better off putting about a pea-sized bead onto the processor itself, and then using your heatsink to get good even coverage.
Applying it, it wasn't the easiest paste to spread on an IHS that I've ever used, however the included spreader did make the job a lot easier in terms of covering the whole top surface. The thermals are very good with Kryonaut, and I'm also using the Cryptonaut liquid metal compound between the IHS and cpu die. Glad I went with it, as I appreciate the extra cool cpu for the extra performance on my overclocked i7-8700k. Goes well with the Noctua NH-D15S cooler. Highly recommended; you won't be crying about hot cpu thermals with this cool paste! For me temperatures never go over 70c because I've got really good airflow in my case, but on air with a 5ghz overclock this stuff does the trick of cooling your cpu just as it is advertised.
This is probably the best conventional thermal compound on the market and it's certainly priced like it. Kryonaut literally tops the charts for every review site for thermal pastes in the past 2-3 years. Only liquid metal thermal pastes (also from Grizzly) outperforms it. Not only does it conduct heat EXTREMELY well, the paste spreads REALLY well too. Often other pastes in the same high tier caliber like Prolimatek PK-3 is very very hard. Often with PK-3 you need a lot of heatsink clamp force in order to spread the paste around thin enough and for enough coverage to be efficient. Kryonaut is VERY soft and liquid which means it's easy to work with. Good spread means more even coverage and a thinner spread that doesn't insulate heat.
I would purchase the larger size even though it's pricier. The small size is really only good for 2-3 applications depending on your usage. It's the best on the market so having so I can understand the upcharge but if you need the top tier performance, it's worth it.
My original review was not positive. But, after reaching out to TG and talking to several friends in the watercooling world, I need to make some changes.
First, my main complaint is the viscosity (or thickness) of the product. After some research and contacting both the company and other people it seems Kryonaut in particular is sensitive to temperature. TG has a FAQ that states if it's too thick to properly apply to put it in a zip-lock type bag and submerge that in warm water. Several people I have talked in the watercooling community say to do this but put it In hot water for at least 10-15 minutes and this helps a TON with application.
Based on this information, i can see where applying it without doing the aforementioned step could also cause less than optimal performance. So, I will re-apply and then check my Temps then.
For now, I will bump my rating up to 4 stars.
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