Thermal paste selection for best cooling.

(WARNING: Several links to pages that demonstrate what I'm talking about here.)

So everyone knows the classic Xbox tends to be a furnace with how warn that Pentium 3 CPU runs. For example, when my box was working the CPU would run upwards of 60 degree Celsius at idle and going to the dashboard right after a hardware demanding game showed the CPU at upwards of 70 degree Celsius. Time for some new thermal compound.

This is where it gets tricky. There are so many out there that finding a good one is hard. Luckily I found a test published about 5 days ago from the date of this post. The test was done by Toms Hardware. This test took some of the top brand lines (as well as toothpaste and denture cream...) and pitted them against each other in a battle showdown to see what cooled best. The results were kind of mixed but the overall winner was Coolaboratory products. There was 4 tests made. A high mounting pressure closed loop liquid cooler CPU system, a low mounting pressure air cooled CPU, a high mounting pressure air cooled CPU, and a medium mounting pressure air cooled GPU.

Notice the trend. For everything CPU, Coolaboratory products all came out in the top 3 for the 3 products tested. For the GPU, Coolaboratory came out on top for one of their products while the other 2 wouldn't work with the GPU cooler. I think it's because the Coolaboratory Liquid Metal and Liquid Metal Pro doesn't work with aluminum heatsinks. Bad news for us since the heatsinks on the Xbox are aluminum. Oh well...

The one that caught my eye is the Coolaboratory Liquid MetalPad. It ranked at 3rd place for all CPU tests and first for the GPU test. It isn't even a paste. It's a pad. The only downside to this one is that it requires a burn in process that requires the component to reach 80 degrees Celsius to burn in. That is a bit risky but a mistake I made on my Xbox some time back showed me that the system shuts down once the CPU reaches around 90 degrees Celsius. So I figure the Liquid MetlaPad will be the way to go for me. I bought a kit that has 3 large pads and a cleaning kit for dirt cheap. ($13.50 shipped.)

What do you use and what do you think would be best for optimal cooling for the thermal compound side of things?

 

There really isn't a bad thermal paste anymore. It used to be that AS5 was the best and everything else was so poor that nothing compared. But now they are all almost equal. On all of those benchmarks your figuring about a maximum of 8 degrees difference. Unless you consider the really cheap stuff that comes with heat sinks. That could be a lot if you're over clocking, but for original xbox with less than ideal stock cooling i don't think you'll see a lot of difference.

But if your like me and want the best just because it's the best, then yes the Coolaboratory stuff looks really good.

 

I'd go with Liquid Metal or the Pro version but they don't work with aluminum and that's what the Xbox heatsinks are. So I went with the metal pads. BTW, it just arrived today. I'll slap some of that sucker on my 128MB board once it shows up. Now I need to get some thermal paste glue to put a small heatsink on the encoder chip to be sure it doesn't overheat. Never ending process of improving consoles...

 

If my opinion means anything.. Try ICDiamond 7 i use them on my PC and graphics card and they drop temps real good. its made from 7 carat crushed diamonds. but its abrasive and hard to spread so be careful. if you have any luck let me know as i am about to get some more for some xbox's i have here around 6 need some TLC on those Chips