Today, we review the first liquid metal thermal paste from be quiet! the be quiet! DC2 PRO. It is a liquid metal thermal paste for GPUs, direct die and delid.
This new thermal paste is available for 11,99 € for 1g.
Thanks to be quiet! for providing us this thermal paste for our tests.
[nextpage title=”The Be Quiet! DC2 PRO:”]
The DC2 PRO from be quiet! is provided in an unpainted cardboard packaging. Note that only the writing is painted and that there is no plastic seal on the packaging. be quiet! limits its environmental impact on this product, a good point.
Inside, we have the thermal paste tube, instructions, nozzle, two cotton swabs and cleaning wipes. Here, no glue was used for the packaging.
For the thermal paste tube, we have a black label with the name of the paste and the brand on the back. No visual on the level of paste which is a shame.
Concerning the specifications of this DC2 PRO from be quiet!, we are on a thermal conductivity of 80 W/m.K. We have no information on the density or viscosity. We know however the composition which is 55% Gallium, 30% Indium and 15% tin. Below are the tables of the different thermal pastes tested on our configuration.
[nextpage title=”The test configuration:”]
Here is the configuration that will be used for the test:
- Motherboard : Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Tachyon (BIOS Z790 Tachyon X6V)
- Processor : INTEL CORE I5 13600KF with ILM Thermalright
- Memory : 2x16gb SK Hynix A die
- Graphics Card: Gainward RTX 4090 Phantom
- Cooling system : Watercool Heatkiller IV PRO + MO-RA3 420
- SSD : Western Digital SN850 500gb
- Power supply : be quiet ! Dark Power Pro 12 1200W
- Operating system : Windows 11 64 bits (version 21H2)
- Screen : Millenium MD34-PRO V2
The cooling is assured by a Watercool MO-RA3 420 radiator ventilated by nine Arctic P14. The pump used is a Watercool D5 PWM mounted on a Watercool Heakiller D5 200mm tube tank. The whole system is controlled by an Aquacomputer Octo and an Aquacomputer high flow USB meter.
[nextpage title=”New protocols:”]
Our new thermal paste test protocol is very young. It is based on an Intel RaptorLake platform with an I5-13600KF and a Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Tachyon on the CPU side. The tests are performed under the same conditions with a Heatkiller IV waterblock at constant pressure. For the GPU part, we will soon be able to propose something with a GTX 780 under waterblock.
Protocol for the CPU measurements :
The I5-13600KF is set to get 190W of load on cinebench R23. The Pcore is at 5700MHz, the Ecore at 4500MHz and the cache at 4500MHz for a voltage of 1,35V bios LLC turbo(1,27V in load).
The application of thermal paste is done crosswise on the CPU, this is the method that works best with all thermal pastes on the market. The waterblock is mounted and tightened to the screw stop to let the springs apply the right pressure.
Then, a cinebench R23 stress test is launched to put the thermal paste in temperature with 10min of heavy load. While taking into account to have 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 the water and the CPU is recorded among these nine measurements.
[nextpage title=”Results:”]
Let’s now have a look at the results and impressions of this be quiet! DC2 PRO thermal paste. We start with the application of this paste, for the use on IHS CPU, it is rather dangerous, it will be necessary to consider a use in direct die or after delid. In our case, we used Kapton to protect the aluminum frame. The liquid metal was spread on the surface of the IHS and the waterblock.
The liquid metal must not come into contact with aluminum, so the application on copper is mandatory at least, but it is also not recommended. It is therefore preferable to use nickel-plated copper surfaces for its application.
Results on CPU:
Unsurprisingly, this DC2 PRO rises to the top of the ranking without any trouble. However, even if the results on IHS CPU are quite convincing, its application and the potential danger for the components do not make it a wise choice. You will have to go through the delid box to use it on CPU or GPU and take precautions in terms of protection.
The measurements were made with water between 27°C and 28°C and a flow rate of 210 L/h. Here are the details of the best measurements on 3 readings per thermal paste.
It should be noted that due to a lack of thermal paste, the Kingpin Cooling KPX, Noctua NT-H2 and Cooler Master Cryofuze Violet could not be retested with the new protocol. These are noted with a “/” and are grayed out in the results. Compared to the previous protocol with the 12900KS, we have here much smaller temperature differences. However, the best thermal pastes remain at the top of the table. Here is the old table of results on the 12900KS, which gives a greater sensitivity to the previous pastes tested.
[nextpage title=”Conclusion:”]
We are coming to the end of this test. With its DC2 PRO, be quiet! encroaches on Thermal Grizzly’s territory with its Conductonaut. The performance is of course better than conventional thermal paste, but it will have to be tested on its preferred territory, i.e. on CPU or GPU die. An update will be put online once the GTX 780 is equipped with a nickel-plated waterblock for this purpose.
As a reminder, this thermal paste is available for 11.99 € for 1g.
be quiet! DC2 PRO
We liked :
- The recyclable cardboard packaging
- The performance
- The excellent holding in long load (ideal on GPU?)
We would have liked :
- An even more aggressive price
With its DC2 PRO, be quiet! encroaches on the territory of the Conductonaut from thermal Grizzly. Having had these two products in my hands, it is easy to say that there is no noticeable difference in their uses. This DC2 PRO is therefore an excellent challenger in this field even if we will have to test more liquid metal thermal pastes to decide.
