When you have to choose a good thermal paste, it’s quite easy to get lost along the way due to so many options out there, which will make this simple choice into a time consuming one.
Luckily, most big cooling brands will have their own version of a thermal paste but we need to explore a bit deeper to understand that a good quality thermal paste will have a great impact on your cooling results. This is because it will allow your processor to transfer more of its waste heat to the cooler, thus keeping your CPU colder. Also if you plan to overclock, then a good thermal paste will help exponentially.
A material’s thermal conductivity is the number of Watts conducted per metre thickness of the material, per degree of temperature difference between one side and the other (W/mK). As a rule of thumb, the higher the number, the better for our cooling needs, because the material conducts more heat energy.
Most brands out there, when it comes to regular thermal paste, offer anywhere between 1 and 12 W/mK. Exceptions being the liquid metal thermal ones (over 50-60 W/mK) which are on a different level but those come with specific drawbacks.
Enter Alpenföhn‘s newest and most capable thermal paste with a claimed thermal conductivity of 15.2 W/mK, called Blitzeis, which literally translate to ‘flash ice’.
Alpenföhn is a company which manufacturers cooling components for IT systems, which started its activity in 2008. The Alpenföhn line includes CPU coolers, fans and accessories which include: thermal compound, storage cooling systems and fan mounting systems.
The Alpenföhn brand was created by the company EKL AG, founded in 1995, it is a company specialized in manufacturing industrial cooling solutions.
Prices and Availability
MSRP is around €9 and will be available in shops in 1 to 2 weeks. We will update this section later when links become live.
Presentation and Specifications
* Courtesy of their website.
Visual Inspection
The Blitzeis come shipped in a striking packaging design reminiscent of its cooling ‘ice’ potential. Thus, branding is excellent, with the main emphasis being the 15.2 W/mK thermal conductivity rating.
You get plenty of useful accessories:
* 1x ‘Grease Pass’ (which is used to properly apply the thermal paste)
* 1x Plastic protective film (especially useful for the newer AM5 CPUs so you don’t spread thermal paste with the Grease Pass into the sides of the CPU heatsink)
* 2x Thermal paste removal wipes
* 1x Spatula
The Blitzeis comes in a standard 2g resealable syringe that should last you multiple usages (~5).
Application
It’s a fairly straightforward process since you get basically everything you need to clean the old paste and apply the Blitzeis.
Attach the film guide corresponding to your socket (AM4 in our case). The Blitzeis looks like any thermal paste, grey and viscous.
Then take the ‘Grease Pass’ and spread the thermal paste until it covers the whole CPU area. It takes a firm hand but it should work on your first try. Then reattach your heatsink while you make sure to tighten everything securely.
Testing methodology
- The CPU will be overclocked to 4.7 GHz for 1.275v, in order to fully test the thermal paste
- The Alpenföhn Blitzeis will be tested against a regular HY510 thermal paste (1.93W/mk) and the popular Noctua H2 (unspecified W/mk)
- As the main torture test, we will employ a 2 minute run in AIDA64
- Room temperature was recorded at ~18°C
- Each paste was spread on the CPU’s heatsink with the Grease Pass and then let at least 30 minutes to fully ‘seat’ with the PC in idle/desktop mode
- All of the side panels will be attached and the AIO’s fans (Swapped to the 3000 RPM be quiet! Silent Wings Pro 4) will be set to 50% and then maximum RPM thresholds
- Any results over 90°C in any condition are considered a fail
Hardware used:
– CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600x
– CPU Cooling: Alpenföhn Glacier Water High Speed
“der8auer” 240 mm AIO RGB
– AIO Fans: be quiet! Silent Wings Pro 4 3000 RPM
– Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-i Gaming mITX @ BIOS 2803
– Boot SSD: Samsung 970 PRO 1TB M.2 Gen3x4 MLC PCIe NVMe 1.3
– Video card: ASUS GTX 1080 STRIX A8G
– PSU: Corsair SF750 SFX Platinum
– Case: Phanteks Evolv Shift XT ARGB mITX
Software:
– OS: Windows 10 Pro x64 Version 22H2
– CPU-Z v1.95 – To verify the CPU’s and RAM’s statistics
– Core Temp v1.17 – To see the temperatures in real time
– AIDA64 Extreme v6.60 – Benchmark suite
Testing, Results and Analysis
The Ryzen 5 5600x was overclocked to 4.7 GHz for 1.275v and went through a 2 minute torture test in ADA64 with the AIO fans (Swapped to the 3000 RPM be quiet! Silent Wings Pro 4) set at two different RPM point: first at 50% (1500 RPM) and then at full throttle 100% (3000 RPM).
The Blitzeis has managed to take the lead over the Noctua by almost 2 degrees which is highly impressive!
Conclusion
Alpenföhn has created a highly capable thermal paste in the form of this Blitzeis, which truly adheres to its ice cool theme. The fact alone, that it provided better thermal conductivity in all tests than the Noctua H2 at a lower price, is a clear win. You also receive a great and useful bundle of accessories so make sure to grab the Blitzeis when it is in stock!
The good:
+ Superb thermal conductivity results
+ Amazing performance/value ratio
+ Resalable syringe
+ 2g should last around 5 applications
+ Electrically non-conductive
+ Easy to apply
+ Useful bundle supplied
The bad:
– Maybe offer in the future a bigger capacity syringe
Glob3trotters “Editor’s Choice” Award 5 out of 5
Many thanks to Alpenföhn for supplying us with this exotic material!
