Until now, conventional thermal pastes have been the norm for conducting heat from your CPU (or GPU) to the heatsink. However, they are showing their limitations in the face of soaring TDPs, and above all they age poorly, requiring regular maintenance if you want to maintain a good level of performance. For some time now, we’ve been hearing about a graphene pad known as the GPE-01. This would be a kind of miracle solution, redefining cooling with graphene. By nature, we’re wary of pads: while they make life easier, they haven’t really convinced us when it comes to performance
Graphene pad: a miracle solution?
Coracer is an obscure Chinese brand that has developed the GPE-01 pad. Initially designed for Intel’s latest sockets (LGA1851 and LGA1700), the company has just presented a version dedicated to the socket AM5. Measuring 32 x 32 mm, it ideally covers the IHS of Ryzen 7000 and 9000. Composed of graphene and silicon, it achieves a thermal conductivity of 130 W/mK. This far surpasses standard thermal pastes, which oscillate between 5 and 15 W/mK, offering up to 17 times greater efficiency. If we compare this with the use of liquid metal, the pad would be 2 times more efficient. Like liquid metal, graphene is renowned for its excellent thermal conductivity, but it is also an electrical conductor. This is why the manufacturer specifies that it has also used a layer of insulating material. But where the advantage is even more obvious is that it retains its exemplary thermal conductivity for almost 10 years. So, of course, all these figures have been put forward without any real tests being carried out. On the question of pricing, the Intel version is offered at around $15 on the Chinese website Taobao. This price is similar to that of Thermal Grizzly’s KryoSheet graphene thermal pads. As a reminder, this pad delivers slightly better results than a good thermal paste…but with the added drawback of liquid metal: electrical conductivity. Our next mission will therefore be to obtain this “miracle” product.
