Curiosity killed the cat, but will it kill us? I went out and bought the new MX-3 thermal paste from Arctic Cooling. Until the other day, I have always used AS5 (Arctic Silver 5) for my important hardware. However, with all the rave reviews about the new MX-3, I decided to give it a try. Is all the banter about this product really true? I am on a mission to find out once and for all!
MX-3 Packaging:
The MX-3 comes in basic packaging as you can see. The big attention grabber on the package was Arctic Cooling claiming that MX-3 is 2.4C better than our beloved AS5. I am not sure how they tested it or how biased these tests were, but we will soon be getting to the bottom of this.
Features / Specifications:
Arctic Cooling MX-3
Arctic Silver 5
*Note the above images were taken from the respective websites for comparison*
Now, we can get into the good stuff with testing temperatures.
Test System:
- I7 920 @ stock and @ 4.1GHz
- 3×2GB Mushkin RAM
- ASUS Rampage II GENE
- Corsair HX750w
- 750GB Hard Drive
Testing Parameters:
- Ambient room temperature: 23-24C ( checked before and after tests)
- Test system is water cooled. To get most accurate readings before each test I turned off the system for 2 hours. This gave the water ample time to get back to ambient. I also tested the water with my wireless temperature probe, just to be on the safe side.
- With Arctic Silver 5 needing 50-200 hours to be at maximum potential, I let our test computer run for 2 weeks before starting. In doing this, it would help give me the most accurate results when testing.
Thermal Paste Installation:
I attacked the I7 with every method known to man. I tried a horizontal line, a vertical line, the grain of rice method, and the flattened credit card method. With all the tests I performed, none of the plans of attack really shined. That is to say, none of the methods were superior to any of the others. With that in mind, I decided to take the average of all of the tests. I figured this would give a better comparison as to what you can expect, no matter how you install your thermal paste.
First up, I will take a look at the stock temperatures. Stock speed for the I7 920 is 2.66GHz.
In the graph above, you can see AS5 with a 1C lead in the idle section of the testing. However, the Arctic Cooling MX-3 jumps back with a 2C lead once the work load increases to 100% load. For running the I7 at the rated speed, both of these temperatures are very acceptable to have for 24/7 use. I would have to give this round to MX-3 because of the full load temperature being 2C less than the AS5.
Next, we will take a look at the overclocked temperatures. Stock speed for the I7 920 is 2.66GHz and I overclocked it to 4.1GHz
Now the big thing you may notice, as I noticed also, is the 100% load temperatures. Arctic Silver 5 takes a commanding lead of 3C over the MX-3 challenger. With as many tests as I ran, the numbers are correct. The only thing I can think of is that the Arctic cooling MX-3 just cannot dissipate tremendous amounts of heat. Yes, it does great when the temperatures are lower as you can see from my numbers.
It seems that when the temperatures start getting higher and higher, Arctic Cooling just does not have what it takes. I also thought, “hmmm, maybe we just got a bad batch of MX-3?” If that is true, then there will be a lot of upset customers out there when they end up with the same batch that I did. With all that said, I do have to give credit to MX-3 and its idle temperatures as they are 2C lower than the AS5 idle temperatures.
With the information I gathered here, I guess I cannot call the temperature chart on the MX-3 package completely accurate. The Arctic Cooling MX-3 does extremely well with low temperatures, but does not seem to excel with higher temperatures. The Arctic Silver 5 handles low temperatures well enough to still be a top contender. When the heat starts pumping though, the AS5 takes its game to the next level and provides the extra few centigrade reduction in temperatures that the MX-3 could not. Everyone loves to see their temperatures lower, especially at 100% load. With the battle of these two top of the line contenders completed, I can state two things with certainty:
- MX-3 seems better with low temperatures and AS5 seems to be stronger with higher temperatures;
- You cannot go wrong with either product. The choice just depends on what brand you are loyal to.
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Interesting!
Soo.. mx3 for AMD rigs and as5 for Intel
lol … that may just be the case
Whoa…and to think that I’ve been using AS5 all this time, being completely ignorant of how good it actually is…and I mean completely ignorant, I was basically using it for every PC I worked with, like it grew on tress or something
haha, I was really surprised at the results myself. From everything I have read MX-3 was suppose to be noticeably better. After so many installations of the MX-3 I gave up trying to make it perform better and accepted those numbers as fact. AS5 and MX-3 are a lot closer than everyone gives them credit for.