If you have two copper surfaces, liquid thermal paste is the best way to go (it’s much, much better than any standard paste). Otherwise something like Arctic Silver 5.
The flatness of the surfaces will make the biggest difference though.
If you want to use liquid metal, conductonaut is the best option.
If you want regular thermal paste, I use MX-4 because it’s one of the best but also has other advantages like being cheap for a large tube, being easy to clean off, having low viscosity, etc.
Other thermal pastes that are good include NT-H1, kryonaut, IC diamond.
Thanks for the answers. I may try better GD pastes one day.
Frankly, I forgot that the first light I’m going to try has a brass pill. So I think liquid metal is an option?
Though if I go this way, my pick will be galinstan as it’s way cheaper than the other options.
But for alu this doesn’t work.
GD-900 that I have is only marginally worse than MX-4. Definitely the difference is not worth the investment.
If I were to switch, I would probably go with Gelid GC-Extreme because it:
All non-liquid-metal thermal pastes are fine on aluminum, never had problems with MX-4 drying out, it’s been in my PC for like 5 years now and temps are the same.
That’s exactly my question.
We can discuss what is better and what is worse. But is the difference going to be 0.1, 1 or 10% with this LED? Anybody bold enough to make a guess or curious enough to try?
Meh, looking at the surface areas of LED board and shelf, this is like 100 times larger than the thermal slug of the LED.
And as long as there’s just a thin layer in between, so preferably with screws or other wise pressed down firmly, it will be fine.
Many tests have shown this.
The drying up seems like the biggest problem though.
Once the grease is dry, it will do a poor job.
So frankly, i think you could maybe better use silicone grease than thermal gunk that will dry up.
Holy cow, am I impressed with this LED. Just dropped one in a run of the mill Convoy C8. I need to adjust the reflector but this thing came alive. Wow. Just glad you guys are around or I would never have known the possibilities of this LED. Now I need to figure out what to put it in next.
so, anyone has real figure about DD driver and low drain cell( ncr18650B, ncr18650GA, samsung 35e)
i am planning to put it to emisar D1s, what is the throw i can expect? half a mile?