New protocols:
Our new thermal paste test protocol is very new. It’s based on an Intel RaptorLake platform with an I5-13900K and a Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Tachyon on the CPU side. Tests are carried out under the same conditions with a Heatkiller IV waterblock at constant pressure.
Protocol for CPU measurements :
The I5-13600KF is set to 300W load on cinebench R23. Pcore is at 5500MHz, Ecore at 3900MHz and cache at 4500MHz.
Thermal pastes are applied crosswise on the CPU, the method that works best with all thermal pastes on the market. The waterblock is mounted and tightened to the screw stop, allowing the springs to apply the correct pressure.
Next, a cinebench R23 stress test is run to bring the thermal paste up to temperature with 10min of heavy load. Care is taken to ensure the same water temperature between each benchmark.
Each thermal paste is applied three times (excluding liquid metal) with one R23 cinebench per application. The minimum delta T° value between water and CPU is recorded from these nine measurements.
