Tuniq TX-3 Thermal Paste Review

Posted by: Sahil Mannick (Helios1234) on: 06/29/2009 11:34 AM [ Print | 0 comment(s) ]

Features and Specifications
Let's see what Tuniq have achieved in their quest to have the most thermally conductive paste.

Features (as seen on the back of the box):
•Extreme performance
•High stability and efficiency
•Not electrically conductive
•6.2W/mK Ultra High thermal conductivity for superior heat transfer
•Tends to form a thinner layer between CPU and heatsink than other grease even under low pressure
•Best solution for the heatpipe direct contact or heatpipe direct touch type CPU cooler (Ex: Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer)
•Helps the low pressure clip design of cooler to achieve better cooling performance
•RoHS compliant
•Low bleed under high pressure.

Specifications
Appearance/Grey
Operating temperature/-45˚C ~ 200˚C
Viscosity/6.2WmK
Specific Gravity/3.011 @ 25˚C
Volume/1ml (3g)

Test Setup

CPU - Intel Core i7 920 - 4ghz
RAM - 6GB (3x2GB) OCZ platinum DDR3 1333mhz
Motherboard - Biostar T-Power x58
Graphics card - Gainward 896MB GTX260 216
Power Supply - Enermax Revolution 85+ 850W
Cooling - Noctua SE 1366 NH-U12P
Hard Drive - Samsung F1 320GB
Western Digital Caviar WD3200AAKS 320GB
Drivers - ForceWare 185.66

Thermal pastes

Tuniq TX-3
Tuniq TX-2
Noctua NT H1
Arctic MX2
Thermolab Baram paste

Program Suite

Core Temp 0.99.5
LinX stress Test
PC Wizard

How I Tested

Each paste was applied as recommended by the manufacturers and were tested over a period of 48 hours to observe if they required any curing time. An initial test was done at stock (2.66ghz) speed and overclocked (4ghz) speed. The idle and load temperatures were measured using coretemp by looking at the minimum temperature while idling and the maximum temperature after 20 passes of LinX. This was repeated after 48 hours.

Due to varying temperatures, an average temperature was calculated and the ambient temperature was subtracted to obtain a delta value. This is presented in the graphs.