Study compares thermal conductivity of everyday products, including toothpaste, potato, cheese, ketchup, and baby cream

Using toothpaste as an alternative to proper thermal compound on GPUs and CPUs is something some have tried with mild success. Although it works, you're probably better off using a low-grade thermal paste. However, for those that may not have any at hand, there's another everyday product better than toothpaste that you can use – ketchup.

A user named AssassinWarlord over at the ComputerBase forum has been testing some thermal product alternatives. Besides various thermal compounds and everyday products like the commonly used toothpaste, the enthusiast also tried potato, cheese, baby cream, and ketchup. The tests were run on an AMD Radeon R7 240, a 30W TDP graphics card that can even be cooled passively.

Image credit: Computerbase (AssassinWarlord)

Surprisingly, ketchup was the best of all everyday products, with the GPU peaking at 71ºC. The second best product was toothpaste, which let the GPU heat up to 90ºC. Every other non-thermal paste product made the GPU throttle at varying levels. The table below includes all the results of the testing:

Product	Temperature	Throttling level
0.5mm Arctic TP2	79 °C
0.5mm EC360 Blue	105 °C	2
0.5mm EKWB	105 °C	3
1mm Alphacool Apex 11W/mK	66 °C
1mm Arctic TP2	105 °C	1
1mm Arctic TP3	61 °C
1mm EC360 Gold	76 °C
1.5mm Arctic TP2	105 °C	2
1.5mm Arctic TP3	68 °C
1.5mm TG Minus8	105 °C	1
Double-sided thermal pad with aluminium	105 °C	Shutdown
Copper tape	105 °C	3
Cheese	105 °C	1
Potato	105 °C	3
Arctic MX4	49 °C
Corsair TM30	54 °C
Amasan T12	63°C
Silver-based paste	65 °C
Ketchup	71 °C
Toothpaste	90 °C
Penaten baby cream	105 °C	1
Copper-based paste	105 °C	1

The throttling levels are classified in the following manner: unthrottled, the GPU clocks at 780Mhz at 1,150V. The throttle level 1 means the GPU dropped its clock speed to 730Mhz at 1,050V. In throttle level 2, the GPU was running at 400Mhz at 1,050V, and on level 3 at 300Mhz at 1,050V.

Despite the decent results of ketchup, we recommend you keep using thermal compounds to conduct the heat generated by chips. Considering how cheap they usually are, it's not worth risking your components just to save a few pounds.

KitGuru says: What other everyday products would you like to see tested as an alternative to thermal paste?

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