Graphite Thermal Pad – Permanent Replacement for Thermal Paste/Grease (40 X 40mm)

This stuff is super easy to use. You'll see people complaining about it being slippery and hard to hold in place ... I had to install this under a desk on my home server, which means I could not lay the case flat. (The Corsair H100i V2 pump died and I was replacing it with an H100i Pro). So I put two tiny daubs of regular paste in the top corners of the processor and stuck it on with that. Then I put everything together and fired up the system. I had been using Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut liquid metal before this. It had dried out and failed after two years. It's a serious pain to install and it is really, really hard to get applied correctly. It's almost worse to try to clean it off. I used a Dremel and a buffing wheel and polished it off after getting the bulk removed with ArticClean binary cleaner. I'll never use that stuff again. BUT it did do a good job as a new install until it began failing. The problem is that eventually either your cooling solution or your thermal paste is going to fail and then you're going to be taking things apart ... Degrading thermal paste, even liquid metals, is a serious problem for high use, high availability, high performance, long duration computer systems. I have replaced the thermal paste on the processor for this machine at least a half dozen times because I've had at least a half dozen CPU coolers on this machine. The computer I'm using this pad on is an AMD FX 8350 Black (On an ASUS 990FX Sabertooth R1 board) that's been running this machine for over ten years. Pretty much everything on the machine has been replaced multiple times except for the processor and motherboard. The processor has a nearly 25% overclock running 24/7/365 (4.95 GHz) It serves all my multimedia (which is a LOT) and is my security camera server (22 cameras), plus the computer I use (3 video cards, six monitors) at the main desk in my shop/office/man cave. Because of the camera system, "idle" is never less than around 50% CPU clock cycles. I can and do use it for gaming though I'm not much of a gamer. It's not a gaming computer. Think more along the lines of a semi-truck than a sports car. It works hard. It gets hot. It's still doing a great job after all this time and I have no intention of replacing it one second before I have to. This is VERY impressive performance for a computer. I don't know if I got lucky with processor and board or it's just that this combination is particularly robust. Whatever the reason, it has been and continues to be a truly great machine. I don't want to trust the cooling system to just any old nonsense. That's why I tried Thermal Grizzly liquid metal last time. I thought long and hard about using this pad before buying and installing it. I'm really glad I did. My temps are almost exactly even with what I got with the liquid metal even though this pad is only rated for half the thermal conductivity that the liquid metal is. So the conclusion I've come to is that the liquid metal either wasn't applied optimally, it squeezed out to the edges when the cold plate on the pump was attached or some other unseeable and unknowable problem occurred ... OR both thermal conductors have maxed out the capacity of my cooling solution. It would not be at all surprising as difficult as that stuff is to apply on a vertical surface that there was an unseen problem in the installation. The pad was super easy. I just put a tiny little daub of TX-2 (that I had laying around, nothing special as far as pastes go) on the top corners of the CPU to hold the pad in place while I bolted on the pump. Those two tiny bits of paste are well away from the die and should in no way interfere with the heat carrying capacity of the system. I literally used paste to paste the pad on long enough to finish the installation. It should be noted that I bought the 40x40mm pad which covered the entire lid and that my CPU is obviously not delidded. I think that's important because it establishes maximum conductivity across the largest possible area. It's only $3 more for the larger pad, don't cheap out on this. Be sure to measure your CPU, look up the dimensional specs or just buy the larger pad and be prepared to cut it down. I also polished the CPU and cold plate with a Dremel and a buffing wheel using green rouge. I had to do that to the CPU to get all the liquid metal off so I figured I might as well do the cold plate while I was at it. I didn't lap it, I didn't mate the surfaces perfectly, I just put a semi-mirror polish on the surfaces free handed. Be careful if you do that so as not to create micro-concave areas that will cause problems with gapping. Temperatures are running around 40 degrees normal use (remember I said it never actually goes to "idle" in normal use?) to around 50 under max load and I don't stress test it with Prime95 or anything like that. There's no need to stress test it, all I care about are real-world results and it's under stress just because it's on. When I turn everything off and it is truly idle it sits just a couple degrees F (~24C) above ambient. As mentioned previously, this pad is rated about half the thermal conductivity of the Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut liquid metal it replaced and it does as well or slightly better on my machine. That could mean that both the Thermal Grizzly liquid metal and this pad are maxing out the possible conduction of heat between my CPU and the pump cold plate. This pad is rated for thermal conductivity about four times what MX-4 produces. There are other factors besides thermal conductivity that work together in determining the effectiveness of your cooling solution. If you're not getting as good or better results with this than you did with MX-4, you're doing something wrong and/or one of those other factors needs to be addressed. The incontrovertible proof of that is all the other highly positive reviews. If we're all getting excellent results and you're not, it is very likely something on your end that is the problem and not an issue with this pad. Unlike paste that can have unknown and unseen air gaps, bubbles, uneven spreading etc. this pad is either in place on clean surfaces or it is not. This isn't arbitrary. The physics of this mean that if it works for me, it works the same for you. If it doesn't work for you as well or better than MX-4 or a similar thermal conduction paste then it's a problem that YOU have, not a problem with this pad. I'm not saying people who have issues with this pad don't know what they're doing. I'm merely pointing out the irrefutable logic of the physical science involved. If all the pads are the same (meaning no manufacturing defects) and every installation follows the same basic process on the same basic materials ... (CPU heat spreader/lid > thermal conductor > copper cold plate) And the vast majority of installations are extremely successful but yours isn't -- Then it's not the pad. You need to find that other variable that's causing the problem if you want to get the same positive results the rest of us are getting. It's worth the effort because this pad is an amazing and highly effective solution. I've been building computers for almost 30 years so it's not like I'm a novice at this stuff, but if you want to challenge my logic please feel free to comment and we'll discuss it. SO -- The performance of this thermal pad is phenomenal. I'm very, very happy with it and the fact that it will outlast my water cooler is a big plus. (I now have three water cooler radiators laying around so I may just go to a reservoir fed open liquid system next time, and I can use this pad again if I do.) Time will tell if it actually resists the degradation that thermal paste experiences and if it dies like thermal paste I'll come back and amend this review. If you don't see an edit below then it's still doing a great job and that being the case ... I'll never go back to goop again. 28 December 2020 - Two years later and the pad is still performing like the day I installed it. I have to shut down the machine and clean the radiator about twice a year but that's it. With a clean radiator on the overclocked processor previously mentioned this pad still works like brand new.

I have used quite a few of these. I must have used one of them in like 8 different builds, and that one alone probably got mounted probably around 100 times. I treat these things like liquid hot magma - or perhaps - Faberge Eggs. I mean i baby them and they are never bent, let alone any kind of folding or rough abuse. Always centered on the CPU so there is as little bleed out pressure as possible. you really want even pressure as close to all the edges, evenly, as possible, to really prolong the life of these. Temperatures are impressive. oddly impressive. Like really not much Delta T away from any of the best non conductive pastes. So performance, reuseablility, ease of application and speed to deployment without waiting around for more paste etc - its a win win nobrainer - these things rock and they are super reliable. If youre having issues getting the thing to stay in place on the cpu while you mount, im sure no one here is going to like this, but i almost always take a TINY, TEENY TINY TINY amount of demineralized water and apply it to the back of the pad. then i invert it so any droplets roll off. they never do, theres never enough moisture for that. but then i place it on the cpu die and mount asap. pad is always in the right place and bobs your uncle. Adhesion confirmed successfully.

So I have a custom water loop in my system, two radiators and two waterblocks. The GPU waterblock has been giving me fits for months because in order to get even distribution across the GPU die you have to turn the screws in a very particular pattern and the thermal paste would still get distributed to all but one corner of the die (not the same corner). I figured out there was a gap between the GPU die and the block so removed all my thermal pads and replaced them with K5-pro which worked like a dream (see my review of the stuff here on Amazon). Still, I wanted a better solution for the actual die, so I've tried thermal paste from thermaltake (G7), Arctic MX-4, and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. All of them performed well but all of them would still get messy and the temps on my Titan X would start out great but then slowly get worse over time instead of getting better as the paste "cured". I saw some of the mixed reviews on YouTube first and began researching this IC graphite thermal pad. Knowing that I could destroy my rig if this stuff touches the wrong component I decided to go for it. I took apart the GPU block, cleaned the die of any thermal compound, cut the IC graphite pad to fit the die of the GPU exactly and replaced the waterblock. After filling and bleeding the system and getting back into Windows the card reported 24C at initial and rose to 25C at idle. At full load, depending on what I'm doing, the temps get to about 43C on most titles and there are a few where it will reach 49-50C after some 30 minutes at 99% load. Overall I'm very pleased with this product. Installation was easy and there is no mess to clean up. I admit I was hoping the thermals would be slightly better but then again I did expect it to be a 1 or 2 degrees hotter than the thermal paste applications. The pad helps to fill any gap that was still left over after using the K5-pro on the mosfets, and vram, and the temps of the GPU fall quickly as soon as the load is reduced after exiting a game or even during games depending on what is on screen or if it switches to a cutscene or something the temps fall quickly and the temps slowly rise after you continue play. Great product, if you are okay with the risks get it, take your time when applying it and enjoy. Update 10/05/2018- I now have an additional IC Graphite thermal pad on my i7-4930K cpu and the temps are great. The base clock for the 4930K is 3.4Ghz with a boost up to 3.9Ghz, and I have mine overclocked to 4.6Ghz. At idle it sits at 26*C and pushes 55*C at full load with Prime 95. With real world use outside of Prime 95 it never comes close to this as it never hits 50*C. My GPU temps have also gotten slightly better with initial temps sitting between 20*-22*C idle temps at 24*C and load temps still maxing out at 42*C with the exception of a few titles that can push it to 46-50*C for a few seconds at a time (e.g. Witcher 3, Final Fantasy XV, and Rise of the Tomb Raider).

This my two week summary of using this product. I'm giving this product a four star rating for two reasons. First, is the installation. Second, it's value and thermal dissipation. Installing this product is really simple. It's as easy as making a sandwich. Just removing the cooler, cleaning the thermal paste off the cpu and copper, and screwing back together. If there is excess hanging off the edge of the cpu, be sure to trim it with a pair of scissors because this pad is thermally conductive. Don't have it touch anything but the cpu and cooler. I bought this pad for ~$13.00usd. Before I switched to this pad, I was using Arctic 5. For my temperatures I ran Aida64 for an hour x3 over three days on both and these were the results. [Ryzen 7 1700 @ 3.8GHz, 1.3125Vcore on the X470 ROG - Coolermaster Masterliquid 240 (Default BIOS Fan Curve)] Arctic 5 Avg: 35.7C Idle - 69.4C Load Thermal Pad: 34.8C Idle - 68.6C Load Take these numbers with a grain of salt because room temperature could have changed a few degrees over the three days. In terms of temperature difference, there wasn't. I'd say it is on par with a good thermal paste. Being reusable, it's more geared towards users that need to swap CPU's a lot. It will cut down time of cleaning coolers and CPU IHS. For the average gamer/workstation, a quality thermal paste should be enough. Something like thermal grizzly or Gelid Solutions. On really hot CPU's, this might be better since it can dissipate more heat (~30W/m-K) over something like kryonaut (12.5W/m-K). I can't test that since I don't have a CPU with a high TDP. Overall, great product!

Pros: After nearly a year in service performance has proven to be excellent, as good as any thermal paste solution I've ever used, and I've tried several brands/formulations over the years of building performance rigs. Note also that I live in the toasty tropics so high ambient room temperatures are definitely a consideration. Thankfully this graphite thermal pad handles the tropic heat with ease! :) The best part is this graphite thermal pad is reusable, which was the main reason I bought it last year. I'm now getting ready to upgrade my older Ryzen CPU. All I'll have to do is to remove the old CPU heatsink and fan, slide the graphite thermal pad off to the side (motherboard oriented horizontally of course), replace the CPU, slide the thermal pad back on top of the newly installed CPU, then reinstall the heatsink and cooling fan. In other words, no muss no fuss and quickly ready to rock and roll again! Cons: Not really a con but the thin little graphite bugger is a bit slippery. Be careful to precisely center it on top of the CPU and be more careful when placing the CPU heatsink on top of it and locking it down as the slippery little thermal pad can easily slide around and become off-centered. Of course, you can easily see the excess overhang and correct the offset so it's not a big deal, but you need to be aware of that possibility. Bottom Line: EXCELLENT product! Glad I bought a spare for an upcoming project. 😁 *******July 2021 UPDATE******** I installed the 2nd pad on a new ASUS X570 m/b. This time I used a couple of strips of masking tape to temporarily secure the slippery little pad while installing the heatsink. (See the attached photo) It worked like a charm! You only need to lightly tape the edges as they overhang the CPU a bit anyway. Once the heatsink is secure the masking tape will easily peel off and not damage the pad. I ended up doing this twice as I had to remove the heatsink a few days later and it worked as flawlessly the 2nd time around. I heartily recommend this as it will save you time and aggravation. 😁

I bought both the 30mm and 40mm, so this review is for both of them. One of my hobbies is in building and modding vintage computers and game consoles of all types. When it comes to x86 PC's a have a fairly large collection of parts. I find myself building and rebuilding them on a regular basis to see what I can get out of them in terms of both performance and compatibility. I've long since been sick and tired of cleaning grease/paste TIM's and stcky pad TIM's deform and get too dirty to reuse more than a couple of mounts. These pads are perfect for everything, starting with higher end 486's up to Athlon64's. The smaller heatsinks used on those old cpu's doesn't seem to cause the pad to "slide" around like other reviews keep talking about. The overall performance is on par with grease/paste TIM's and it's very easy to work with. I've reused both sizes several times since I got them and see no deformation in the pads. Truly a no muss, no fuss product. These pads are a must if retro rig building is a hobby. As far as use on modern PC's are concerned, I did try to 40mm on an AMD 2400G with a spare Wraith Prisim I had left over. The pad kept trying to move on me unless I moved VERY slowly. The slightest movement would off center the pad. I think larger (more modern heatsinks), cause a downdraft when lowering them into place and it causes these slippery pads to move. The performance on the 2400G was about 6-7 degrees worse at idle compared to MX4, and 12+ degrees worse under full stress test load. I can see these pads being useful for modern rigs if you're just testing outside the case, but I wouldn't recommend them as a permanent TIM due to lower performance. Keep in mind that I only tested on one rig and with a direct contact heatpipe heatsink. It still works well, and no cleanup needed as well as being reusable. It just doesn't seem to perform as well as other TIM's. I hope this review helps retro builders as these pads are perfect for that hobby.

Conclusion: excellent product - a little expensive on initial cost but if one could use it correctly and carefully, it could be a great component to your PC(s) in the long run. I built my very first desktop PC in December 2019. It was a Ryzen 5 3600 system on an ASRock X570 PHANTOM GAMING 4 Motherboard. I used the stock CPU fan. After 3 months of usage, I was happy with the system. But I looked at the CPUID HW Monitor often and found that the CPU temperature has been consistently high at around 75 C. sometimes it reached 85 C or even as high as 89 C without OC. So I decided to change the CPU fan. I choose the Arctic Freezer 34. Then I took some time to choose a Thermal paste. I watched one of the YouTubers to demonstrate one of his PC builds, he used an Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pad. He said he likes this gem because it doesn't dry overtime as thermal paste does, and it is not messy. I read many comments under this product and watched a few DIY videos on this Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pad and decided to give it a try. I initially picked the 30mm X 30mm size, which was a few dollars cheaper. But I checked the dimensions of my CPU, it came to a little bit smaller than 40mm X 40mm. So I changed the size of my Thermal Pad to 40mm X 40mm. It turned out to be almost the exact size, I didn't need to cut it down to fit exactly it on my CPU. It worked well. Now my CPU is very happy with consistent lower temperatures between 33 C to 75 C, about 10 C lower on both top end and lower end. That means this Graphite Thermal Pad is really doing a great job passing the heat from the CPU to the CPU fan. I agree with many people who commented that it's worth it because one could re-use it if he needs to take off the fan for cleaning or change the fan or recycle it on a new PC build in the future provided that it doesn't rip.

With a Ryzen 7 2700X CPU and Wraith Prism cooler, I idle around 40-50C, and a stress test with prime95 with the max heat option goes to 70C within a minute. But once it reaches 70C, it very slow climbs to 73C, and seems to stick around there. Compared to a large cooler and ICD7, it would also climb quickly to 70C, but progress a bit quicker up to 75C. So overall, it works about as well as thermal paste, if not slightly better. But being able to re-use the pad is the biggest advantage in my case. Being able to swap coolers for testing without having to clean off thermal paste, along with having to add more is also great. It was a bit difficult to install "perfectly" though; the Wraith Prism cooler by itself is already more of a challenge than usual to install, but this thermal pad moved across the CPU with the slightest touch. Because it overlapped my CPU surface a few mm (I got the 40x40 pad), I used a piece of electrical tape on the edge with the socket identifier and taped the tiny edge of the thermal pad in-place, which worked nicely. But this is a great concept, and I'm amazed OEMs aren't using it. Don't have to worry about paste drying, or applying too much of it. Don't have to worry about most people taking off coolers to do re-pasting and potentially voiding warranties. You'd have less customer support tickets due to overheating likely caused by bad/dried-out paste. You can cut it to a consistent size, and it works for CPUs, GPUs, and even memory chips. At best, it seems on-par with highly-ranked thermal paste (which most OEMs don't use), and it'll easily blow away cheap, over-applied paste. Going forward, I'll definitely only be looking at graphite thermal pads!