Arctic MX-6, complete analysis of this CPU thermal paste

For the rest, it should be noted that it is a thermal paste made with micro carbon particles and silicone gel, without harmful or excessively expensive materials (some thermal pastes even have diamond dust or metallic particles, but this is not the case). Having excellent performance at a reasonable cost. A 2-gram syringe, which costs around 12 Euros, can easily give you 10 applications or more.

Unboxing and external analysis

Arctic, as we mentioned earlier, offers this thermal paste in a variety of formats, but besides the single syringe, it also has a pack with wipes for cleaning the previous thermal paste in a much larger container. In our case, they sent us both formats with 4-gram syringes in both cases.

handkerchief MX Cleaner They come in separate sachets for removing thermal paste and be careful because these are wet wipes with a very, very strong disinfectant smell. We’ve tested these and of course recommend using the wipe to naturally remove the thermal paste before you press it too hard and fold it so you can always wipe it off with a clean piece, but we recommend wiping it after this is done. Apply some toilet paper to remove any disinfectant liquid residue that may remain on the surface.

Thermal paste syringes look the same as the vast majority of these products, of course with the identification label and the unscrewed pressure cap.

Of course there are some “windows” in the back that allow us to see how much is left inside.

There’s little to teach you about this thermal paste, so let’s get started testing it.

performance test

Before we move on to measuring its performance using thermal paste on a processor, let’s take a look at how it looks and evaluate its viscosity. To do this, we pour a good amount of it on a piece of paper and the first thing we notice is a “flow” that may be very thin and a little difficult to control. In fact, at this point we already see that maybe because it sticks to the syringe, its viscosity is too much and we need to rub a little on the paper to get the paste out.

Now we fold the paper and put enough pressure on it with our fingers to see how the dough spreads.

The dispersion is pretty good, which means it’s not as viscous as it seems to us in the first place, especially when we don’t put as much pressure on the processor as a heatsink would and actually put a lot more. Normally, we apply thermal paste on the paper that we will pour on the IHS of the processor.

Now yes, we will continue to apply thermal paste to the processor, in which case a Core i7-13700K from intel. The method of application is the one we personally use at all times and gives us the best results; You already know that there are many theories about the best way to apply thermal paste, but in our experience the theory that worked best for us has always been to apply and spread thermal paste the size of a grain of rice. with a card or similar.

Once this is done, what interests us is not to control what temperature we get on the processor because that depends on the processor, heatsink, etc. exactly the same processor and the same sink.

That’s why we used a total of 4 thermal pastes in our tests: Arctic MX-6, which we reviewed today, Noctua NT-H2 of course, CORSAIR TM30 and CORSAIR XTM70, all 13700K and be quiet with a dispenser! Pure Rock 2 FX.

The method is the same: spread a grain of rice with thermal paste, install a heatsink, let it rest for 20 minutes, let Prime95 sit for 10 minutes, turn off the computer for 10 minutes and the paste has settled with it. Then we turn on the computer again and run the processor with Prime95 for 10 minutes to catch the maximum temperature of any of the cores.

In the graph below you can see the result expressed as Delta temperature, ie the measured temperature minus the ambient temperature, so the comparison is still reliable even if the ambient temperature changes.

As you can see, the Arctic MX-6 is the winner of this comparison, taking 0.7 degrees from the excellent Noctua NT-H2 and 1.9 degrees Celsius from the CORSAIR TM30, which is hardly a bad thermal paste. Of course, in terms of performance, Arctic again seems to have done an excellent job.

Conclusion: Is the Arctic MX-6 the best thermal paste on the market?

With the new MX-6, Arctic has once again launched one of the best thermal pastes on the market, no doubt about it. The best? Empirically, we weren’t lucky enough to test all the thermal pastes on the market, but the ones we’ve had (and lots of) over the last 10 years certainly are. with the best thermal performance provided to us.

Arctic, as always, has created a product that has excellent performance and is in an easy-to-use format, very practical (especially in the package that comes with the wipes) and at a very reasonable price despite the lack of thermal. Putty, which we can call cheap, yes, without a doubt one of the best performance / price ratio.

At the time of writing this analysis, you can buy the Arctic MX-6 on Amazon Spain for €5.59 for the 2-gram variant, €7.59 for the 4-gram variant, and €17.99 for the 8-gram variant. . There is also another one we analyzed, the 4-gram syringe containing six MX Cleaner wipes. €8.49and we believe this is the best offer.

For all these reasons, we believe that this Arctic MX-6 deserves our Platinum award as well as our recommendation for both its performance and quality/price.