i'm not totally sure how many people
would recommend this but uh all of us pc building tech dweebs
already know about thermal paste okay aka the hot stuff aka the gray goo aka
grammy's old sandwich spread what but
what if you're out of thermal paste yeah you could just go order more pick some
up from ncix or you could make your own Linus actually
got an email from a fan suggesting we do this so in this video we are going back
to chemistry class and finding out whether any of these materials can work
as a thermal paste substitute because Linus isn't here and he can't stop us
but i do have alex here to make sure that i don't uh blow up this pc with
nutella because that that's a real possibility
what
the hex gears impulse mechanical keyboard has RGB lighting a variety of
different key switches and ip56 water resistance so it can survive some of
your worst spills use offer code LTT to save ten dollars at the link below as
alex could tell you but i will instead the there's two main things [ __ ]
guys i'm not Linus you'll get there
sadly okay so the main purpose of thermal
paste is to assist the heat transfer between the CPU and the heat sink when
you put them together because you put them together but there's still a little bit of gaps in between
so what do we need thermal paste to do what are the two main qualifications
we're looking for so i guess the first one is that it needs to be really easily
spreadable so like you have all those little dips and stuff
and you want to just fill those in you don't want to be creating like a layer
between your CPU and your heatsink right and the other thing is that it has to be
really good thermally conductive so you don't have just like
a bunch of resistance between the two you want that heat to be transferred
yeah okay so with those qualifications there are a large number of materials
that we could potentially use with
varying efficiencies so so what do we have here
okay so some of you might be familiar with this toothpaste a lot of people
have tried it and we're not going to try it by itself today because it's been
tried a lot but it's actually a surprisingly effective substitute the
problem is that it's got fluoride in it and that means it's slightly corrosive
and it also tends to dry out very easily
so what we're gonna mix it with thanks to some tips on the internet is
petroleum jelly aka vaseline uh but this
is the no-name brand because really bad stuff and why is it bad it's chunky oh
that's true but if we mix it together i don't know i mean this is a smooth type
of toothpaste because the main thing when you're using toothpaste you don't want the the gritty kind with like the
little beads in it or whatever we'll just do it should we just do it yeah i
want to just do it okay um uh you could oh dear
yes maybe i feel like that's slightly dangerous
why you're a monster alex what CPU is this also uh that's a 7980xc
jesus so maybe we don't want to get toothpaste alex like a 2 000 processor
you're supposed to rain me in i'm not supposed to rain you in what are we
doing here ah i don't know this seems to be working
okay like i don't think it's the way that you thought that you know that's
true well i think we're about good like okay yeah you want to try it like that
yep the wrong way all right well
you've made your bed and now we're gonna lie in it i guess so i'm guessing that
you've already done the testing i ran a baseline with real thermal paste
and i also ran it bareback as they say did
you find a board that doesn't have a power button on it no it has a power
button ready
whoa it's on it works
yes
so we just gotta boot it up and then run ida 64
a little bit and stress test it and see whether uh
the computer will explode that's how we know right yeah yeah
all right i had a 64. um where do we have the wait it should come up
automatically because i'm a pr i'm a programmer i'm a big
big tech hacker look at that oh geez wow that's fancy see that's what the
toothpaste does oh that's pretty good uh like 20 degrees
idling very nice um what was our baseline head over to
documents bareback and baseline so baseline we're
looking at a max of what 65 degrees package got up to 70 hottest core 65
bareback we are looking at 104 degrees
yep that's not great yeah when i did the bareback it just shot right up past 100
so so let's see here
toothpaste and vaseline is looking um
actually not bad your CPU package is already at 68. uh hottest core okay so
we're at 65 already so we're not beating thermal pace that is for sure things go
real slow when you're stress testing the CPU that's what i learned
and which i already know that's only like five degrees over like
actual thermal paste though so it's a way better option than just not
having anything that's very true so if you're like really in a bind you're like
i gotta get my old my dad's old dell from when i was a small child up and
running immediately right now
not bad not horrible one of them got up to 79. that's too hot i wouldn't go
outside if it was that hot so that one was kind of a joke all right
guys but this next one actually might work as a real substitute
because what we're using is silicon grease o-ring lube
it's what o-ring lube it's o-ring lube and that's not something dirty it's just
things that you use for o-rings yeah yeah
so we're actually combining silicon grease with
drum roll please
diamond powder cool i didn't even know that was a thing
but it is so we're basically using the diamond as the
thermal conductor and the silicone grease as the medium
for that uh material we're not just throwing this on okay
we're gonna mix it properly this is a science this is a science laboratory and
i won't stand for your nonsense so before if you're gonna deal
with diamond powder at all guys we need
masks all right and i'm really glad that
alex brought that up yeah let's do that
i would have remembered about the masks okay
yeah after you started coughing
so this is what zero to one don't open it yet don't open it yet zero to one
micron diamond powder i guess this is traditionally used for like polishing
mirrors oh it's 25 carats 25 carat
oh okay so the ratio we're supposed to use
is around 60 40. whatever that means um
i'm just gonna eyeball it then yep
papa alex so is this kind of just like making icy
diamond like i see diamond has diamonds in it right yeah and it kind of looks
like it too do you think we need more grease in there yeah maybe a bit should
i be wearing gloves that's probably fine got some icy
diamond for comparison oh wow
that's dark yeah this is a lot thicker than other
thermal pastes so how much did this diamond powder cost for that package it
was like 15 bucks or something oh this
is also a super weird application well you're taking your mask off
yeah what are you doing the dust isn't around anymore we're good oh no science
class is not in session anymore well except for the science we're doing right
here yeah except yeah except for those yeah we do what we must because we can
that is a proverb and a half right there
all right so idle looking like 30 degrees that feels like
it's higher than what it was last time but uh the diamond powder and the
silicone grease is uh this is a little bit more of a practical uh alternative
you're not just like trying to get something up and running right away you're like you know what screw the
system i'm making my own thermal paste i'm growing my own tomatoes in my
backyard that's that's what that's who this is for yeah but it's working really
bad this is like when you when you try and make tomatoes in your backyard and
then you know the deers eat them and yeah and
it ends up that you weren't even growing tomatoes the whole time they were like it was actually weed
yeah all right so this here is my idea we've
got some rapid tap you want to use rapid tap instead of
silicon grease yeah okay what if the problem also could be
that our diamonds are just too big and we need smaller ones
could you imagine just having like a great big diamond
in the middle i also don't know if rapid tap is electrically conductive
it probably is so we definitely will not want to be getting this on anywhere
that's not the CPU okay i guess we're about to get good to go for this thing
cool for your your my luby concoction
this was not endorsed by my internet sources so no guarantees that it will
perform as well as our homemade diamond paste i think it's gonna be better this
is actually like how you would use this normally you'd like combine it with an
oil and then spread it out on like a surface
plate and polish something
speaking of which do you want to do that after
i do what i'm seeing 67 77 i think your diamond
paste like it's worse than toothpaste and petroleum jelly
buy quite a bit so don't don't go up buying diamonds just use your freaking
toothpaste you know diamonds are kind of useless
like they cost a lot and they don't really do anything except look pretty i thought this would be one functional
application bye see you later see you later i think mustard is going
to destroy this oh my gosh um you know
you put your faith in something and then it just lets you down yeah and then you
go all the way down hit rock bottom and try mustard
here we go
starting the test i see 47 52
57 58 we're still doing better than the
diamond at this point 63. so basically
condiments are way better than diamond powder
what the hell okay we just had 74 but it's like this
is usable this is an 18 core processor
you know what this means we got to build
a liquid-cooled pc just using condiments well it works so great with concrete so
yeah i think we can call that basically a win for mustard all right well so it
seems like anything besides diamond paste as far as uh last
minute things go not the worst surprisingly
okay let's move on yep so the thing about nutella it's the only
stuff here that i kind of want to eat
way too much
so that's actually not coming off
do you get mustard off we need actually like soap
we've cooked the mustard onto the metal
now we're gonna now we're in a bit of a pickle what
okay hold on hold on hold on it's wet dude it's dripping yeah exactly
because we need to get it off okay but what about this uh
so let's just kind of pack that around the CPU
uh alex is supposed to keep me in check for
this video i find myself stressing out look if we wreck this board it's your
fault oh that's fine i think it's all good it's only like a little bit of
water that's around there now and it's basically all gone so yes this is what
we thought would do better than mustard i'm not
so confident anymore you know
being a cameraman is hard work i understand that here you go david yeah
yeah there you go
how's that that was weird
in a university while i was studying for exams one time i just like downed a
whole bottle of nutella much like i had it there just like with a spoon and then
um threw up violently and i didn't eat
nutella for like six or so years after that you do weird things
nutella addiction is a scourge a scourge it's no joke let's see if
nutella is really gets results that are just as nutty as it is
okay uh so we're looking already at 52
degrees up 60 i see 63 65 71 okay this is not
gonna be as good as mustard so i wasn't really joking when i said we might blow
up the pc with nutella no it might be worse than diamond paste
everything is terrible i guess uh sugar and fat content isn't
everything maybe we should just put a ferrero rocher just like
right in the middle okay now actually i'm expecting this to
maybe do okay because it's 40 zinc oxide
is that good which is the main ingredient in some thermal pastes and
and i don't know why uh zinc oxide would be helpful to uh baby bums but it might
be helpful to this baby bum right here
all right okay
69.
not not worse than
mustard mustard we're one degree off from mustard though
i think that we might find out that mustard is your best bet
like mustard is probably better than some budget thermal pastes so this is
officially worse than mustard for like a few minutes for diaper rash cream yeah
true it is diaper rash cream and it's not gonna dry out we're only six degrees
up yeah six degrees isn't too bad i really did not think any of this
hey what is that you wanna
whoa that right there is a lapping plate
this is so heavy what are we gonna do with this solid steel so stick it right
on top well but like the whole point of thermal paste is to
fill in the gaps but what if there were no gaps
yeah much like tender dates everywhere we are going to just try and do it with
no thermal paste and i didn't say that quite right
yeah whenever i go on dates and they don't have thermal paste man i'm just
gone yeah we need just a little bit of this polishing compound polishing compound is
that like diamond powder yeah diamond powder actually is a polishing compound
of sorts gonna just throw some rapid tap in here bam do a little stir yeah now we
just have to put it on the lapping plate and go ham
very rhythmic you're essentially grinding down the
surface of the heatsink block yes
so that it's smooth as a baby's bottom
smoother even if you want to get the CPU out so we can
oh so wait you're gonna drag the CPU across that yep that's
that's the plan i didn't know that adding alex to this video would make it
more off the walls wow that's turning into just copper now
all of the protective coating is just leaving
so i'm going to need to step up to a lower grip but higher cutting power i
have never done CPU lapping before it is a thing that lots of people do to
improve performance we aren't doing this to improve performance but uh we're
doing it to prove that protection is for the weak
yeah people please don't have that be your takeaway here
i don't feel amazing about this things weren't quite as flat as i thought that
they were at the beginning so we've had to take off a lot more material than i
thought and i'm afraid that we're still quite a ways off of being flat so like
you can see kind of like here we haven't even touched it with the
surface plate yet and right there as well so that means that there are really big high spots there and there
so kind of like around the edges here
and in the center was a lot higher than like because it would be contacting the
silicon around here and then right around the die it was higher i'm a bit
concerned about how much crap i got all over the CPU around like these little
resistors here i'm not sure how i'm going to get that out on the other edge
there's like it's just kind of all over the place uh
i'm not totally sure what to do
the thing that riley brought me in so that
things wouldn't be dying like geez this is um
i'm not totally sure how many people
would recommend this but uh i certainly wouldn't oh
jeez louise we have and we haven't even told Linus we're doing this so hopefully
he was going to come around the corner the thing is that when you use water and
you like put it all over a processor the water can kind of stick around so you
want to just dunk it in alcohol first yeah why not and then that shows it away
and we should be about good to go definitely do that
i have no doubts that this will work flawlessly good me too
sometimes you play with a 2 000 processor hopefully you didn't break it
here we go was this worth
possibly killing the processor
we will find out questionable for sure but um was it worth it for the views
though if we get them most people have turned off the videos yeah everyone's
gone we got into the BIOS
yep didn't kill it excellent
so we're idling at about 20 28 degrees or so um
which is about the same as last time so we might be able to actually beat like
nutella or um diamond paste using this
being 80 oh that's cloud that's climbing fast right that's climbing really fast
beat the diamond paste
89 we we still have a little bit of room
still a little bit 90.
it's a really similar trajectory to the diamond pace 93.
see but that's what's that's so surprising like why was the diamond
paste so bad i don't know because this is bareback
and it's it's doing very similar this has nothing
and it's doing very similarly so it's back down to like 93 degrees so
okay flattening it did help a bit it seems to be better than the diamonds but
uh so if you want to keep uh under load you know you want to keep it at a nice
frosty 94 then flattening is yeah it's
great good to go but i guess if you actually want to keep
it cool toothpaste and petroleum jelly excellent option yeah diaper rash cream
also pretty good if you have it around yeah not horrible mustard
surprising winter but also got toasted
and surprisingly diamond powder with anything
not as good as we thought so i see diamond must have some sort of like
secret you know secret recipe or something yeah
or it's just way finer than what we had or something
i don't know at the end of the day you know we found that some materials
can actually work for a hot minute or minutes
but on the whole you probably want to use
thermal paste so if you're if you're really desperate you might turn to
something else but for the most part just go to the store
pick up some thermal paste order some thermal paste like 15 bucks on prime
probably it's not bad guys something else you might want to pick up
is the sound core infini pro by anker
the infini pro is a 2.1 channel sound bar with dolby atmos an immersive 3d
audio technology that doesn't just pump sound at you but above and around you
the infinity pro uses two built-in subwoofers with base up technology to
produce booming loads then fills out the sound with two full-range speakers and
two tweeters and with the ability to pass 4k HDR signals through to your tv
and wirelessly stream audio from your phone or tablet the infini pro is one of
the best value dolby atmos speakers conceived by humankind so check it out
at the link in the description all right guys that's it for this video alex has
already given up and gone right back to eating nutella if this video sucked you
know what to do but if it was awesome hit that like button get subscribed and
click the link in the video's description to check out some of the things we featured in this video i guess
yeah you could go buy some toothpaste also linked down in the description is
our merch store so you can buy shirts like this one and other awesome stuff
and our community forum which you should totally join