Hello there and welcome back to yet another review article for you! This time, we will be looking at a highly acclaimed thermal paste by Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. In this Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut review, I will be sharing basic details about thermal pastes and also providing with you a sped-up video on how to apply thermal paste on your laptop CPU and GPU.
Table of Contents
What is Thermal Paste?
Thermal paste is (also known as a thermal compound, thermal grease, thermal gel, or heat sink paste) a thermally conductive, but almost always electrically non-conductive chemical compound that is used between heat sinks and heat sources (such as CPU or GPU).
The main function of thermal pastes is to eliminate air gaps and space from the contact area of these internal components and to maximise heat transfer. Thomann's 70th Anniversary Offers
Thermal pastes don’t act like glue in between these internal PC or laptop components and they are required to be held together with the help of pressure coming from heatsinks.
Do I Have to Buy Thermal Paste?
All PCs and laptops actually come with thermal paste applied out of the factory as it’s a standard procedure to create this interface between CPU, GPU and heatsinks.
So actually you don’t need to buy thermal paste and apply it when you buy your PC and laptop. However, it is recommended that you renew the thermal paste after 3-4 years of usage as thermal paste tends to dry up and lose its thermal conductive features.
Currently, I have a Victor-branded laptop (based on Clevo W65 67SJ model) which I have been using for the last 7+ years. Victor brand was a Turkish custom laptop manufacturer that would customise Clevo laptops in Turkey. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt right after I bought my laptop 🙂
To be honest, I was concerned about the warranty but it has never let me down, not even once since 2015. Throughout the years, I gradually upgraded and changed the components of my laptop as I thought it was worth it. Check out the best guitar pickup company, Seymour Duncan here!
As of now, I maxed out everything upgradable such as RAM, and additional HDD using a caddy that replaced the CD-ROM. However, I never thought about renewing the thermal paste and upgrading the paste with a well-known brand.
Recently, I noticed my laptop getting really hot while using CPU-heavy software or rendering. The laptop fan was frequently working hard to cool it down. So I started researching to see if there was anything I can do about this.
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut
While researching this specific topic, I ended up going for renewing the thermal paste as my laptop was already 7+ years old and this was never done before.
The thermal paste topic is a pretty complicated one, especially if you dare to tap into gamers, over-clockers world! 🙂 There are countless thermal paste brands, product types and comparison videos out there.
As I’m not an expert on this topic, I’m not going to provide a full-blown comparison of thermal pastes in the market. However, I will definitely make use of other people’s expertise to provide you with a simple insight into this topic.
While I was looking for a thermal paste, I realised Thermal Grizzly brand which is a highly respected company. Thermal Grizzly is a German company that specialises in cooling solutions. They feature tons of thermal pastes and relevant accessories.
Before I bought Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut thermal paste, I watched a couple of comparisons videos as well as read some articles and user feedback.
How to Apply Thermal Paste?
Until I watched this below by Gamers Nexus channel, I thought these fancy-named, premium-feel thermal pastes would make a day and night difference. Also, I thought how you apply the thermal paste was also so critical and could change anything.
However, I don’t think there’s much of a difference as you can see in the video. Especially, if you go for a respected brand like Thermal Grizzly and apply an X-pattern (as suggested), pea size drops, a little less or a little more, it gives pretty much the same results.
So before I applied the Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, I watched this video and kinda got relaxed about it! 🙂
Having said that, I was more curious about the difference between a factory applied, 7 years old thermal paste vs a premium thermal paste, freshly applied.
With this curiosity in mind, I quickly attempted to apply the thermal paste. After having removed the back lid and screws, I managed to remove the heat sink. But what shocking to me was the amount of dirt and gunk stuck at the air outlet! Check out the video and see how much stuff got stuck there! 🙂 Martinic Plugins - Precisely Modeled Vintage Instruments and FX Plugins
I cleaned this up with a vacuum cleaner and then also used some isopropyl alcohol to degrease it. I also needed to clean the old thermal paste using Lotus Degreaser which contains a high concentration of isopropyl alcohol. You can use any isopropyl alcohol product here.
Please also see in the video how shiny the CPU, GPU and heatsink became, almost like a mirror!
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Application Video
As you can see in the video below, I just added a pretty good amount of Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut both on the CPU and GPU. And didn’t even spend time spreading it with the spatula that came with the Kryonaut.
Before I even started recording this attempt, I already opened up my laptop and was using it for web browsing for an hour or so. During that time, I wanted to measure the CPU core temperatures using Core Temp software.
I also did the same after having applied Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and again, measure the temperature with Core Temp.
On the left, you have the pre-application and on the right, post-application. I don’t think there’s a difference! 🙂
However, my laptop got quieter and also the heat over the mouse pad decreased slightly. I wonder why!
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut is really worth it?
I think it was just due to the realisation of what’s stuck inside the heatsink. Before that day, I never got curious and removed the heatsink. I would always clean the air outlet using compressed air but never cleaned that deep.
I think for general consumers, these won’t make a huge difference. I can not really prove to you that a premium thermal paste made a huge difference. It was kind of an upsetting moment because most of the user reviews claim that their laptops and PCs went quiet after using this product. Music Plugin Deals at Pluginboutique.com
I don’t think there’s a direct correlation here! I wonder if those users also happened to clean that gunk which got stuck there for years and realised their computers got cooler and quieter!
All I know is that I went for an industry standard, particularly premium thermal paste and renewed the factory default thermal paste which was already 7+ years old.
As you are already aware, I really like doing simple comparisons from a standard user perspective and sharing the outcomes with you because I like to debunk highly exaggerated value claims by consumers who are dying to justify their purchases to the max!
What do you think about my findings? Let me know using the contact form below! I hope you enjoyed this article and found it helpful!
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