Noctua Announces New Thermal Paste and Pate Cleaning Wipes

Guest_Jim_* · January 29, 2019

For general use, the thermal paste between your CPU and heatsink likely will not matter too much, but when you want the very best performance and thermals, you know you need a good material. Today Noctua has announced a successor to its NT-H1, the thermal paste that has shipped with the company's premium-quality coolers for over ten years, that improves on its design. Dubbed NT-H2, this new thermal interface material has had its mixture of metal oxide nanoparticles tuned for lower thermal resistance and to shrink the bond-line thickness for typical mounting pressures. This should improve its performance compared to NT-H1 in most scenarios, but there are many factors to consider.

In the company's performance comparison between these two materials, the greatest difference was shown with the AMD TR4 socket, a very large socket with powerful CPUs and both the size and power will make the difference between quality materials stand out. The difference for the TR4 socket was 2.1 Cº, while on the Intel LGA1151 it was just 0.2 Cº. On the AMD AM4 socket the difference was 0.6 Cº and on the Intel LGA 2066 it was 1.1 Cº. You can find the chart and more information on the testing at the second source link and in the video below.

Also announced were the NA-CW1 cleaning wipes that come pre-moistened with a detergent mixture for leaning CPUs, GPUs, and heatsink contact surfaces. These will come in the 10 g packages of NT-H2, which includes ten of these wipes and three 3.5 g units of the paste, and separately in packs of 20. Noctua is also introducing a 10 g package of the NT-H1 material for those who need larger volumes of paste. These should all be available in the next few days through Noctua's official Amazon and eBay outlets. The NT-H2 material will cost $12.90 for the 3.5 g package or $24.90 for the 10 g package. The 20 unit package of the NA-SCW1 wipes will be $7.90 and the 10 g package of NT-H1 will be $14.90.