What’s your experience with this paste? I switched to it from MX-4 and I get mad when applying. It’s like trying to spread cold plasticine. I’ve learnt to heat it up before application but comparing to mx-4 it’s PITA.
I wonder whether my piece from Amazon is old, wrongly stored or it’s typical for this model?
I am a little confused. When you say MCPCB are you meaning the spring plate (that I think goes in the tail) ? Just having a brain issue deciding what got replaced besides the springs themselves.
AAAH. Thanks. That is what confused me. I guess I haven’t seen blank MCPCB like those before. Where would something like that be found? Interesting solution. Soldering them to the big AL spring plate would be difficult. I appreciate the help!
I haven’t seen them blank but you can sand off the Solder mask pretty easily.
It is thick like plasticine, the advantage of the thickness is that they don’t pump out during heat cycle on small bare silicon, so like desktop gpu and laptop cpu/gpu die. Thinner paste would easily ooze out cause of the small surfaces area.
But yeah, it is pain to spread cause of it, but I just do cross or line methods on bare stuff like that.
IDK if that is beneficial for flashlight stuff, but I use it cause I have currently it laying around.
Cleaning is easier tho as the texture stayed the same!
Yeah! Just like @INeedMoreLumens said.
It’s 3 pieces of 9090 20mm MCPCBs that I sanded down the solder masks off for the base of the new springs to be soldered onto, to replace the default tail springs.
Any reason that you didn’t sand the back side. It looks like there is some kind of coating on the side that contacts the big AL spring plate. Thanks for the reply. Nice solution!
Thank you!
It was just me not putting enough effort, my sand paper grit is too high, so those corner are harder to remove.
I do think the retaining rings still make electrical contact on the exposed topside near those edges.
But I’ll be sanding it again when I go to hardware store to get more abrasive one!
I just built two PCs. I looked for reviews on paste. Supposedly the Frost X45 tested the best in a few reviews. I tried it on the CPU of one and just couldn’t get it to spread. More would stick to the spreader than the CPU.I think similar to the MX6 it just has more solids in it. I gave up and used the Noctua paste that came with the heatsink. It spreads easily and is what they recommend. The second on I decided to use the X45. It took me many tries and way too much of the expensive paste. I finally got a pretty decent thin even coating. But I had to remove it and start over several times to get there. I don’t see any measurable differences in CPU temps between the two machines. I tend to think if you can get a good thin coating, just enough to fill any irregularities, there won’t be much difference in the heat transfer between the different pastes.. In case it helps anyone.
I wonder if it will lower the resistance/voltage drop much. Having all of the back surface in contact with the AL plate seems like it might be better. It should already be far better than stock. I might try a file first… but then you need to be careful to keep it flat. But depending on the file, it will go faster.
All decent paste will seems to perform about the same, I’m still using the paste that come with my AIO. I’ll be getting TG Duronaut to replace it with, apparently its easy to spread and work really well even for GPU, even with the pump out issue with thinner paste.
Yeah, if there is any it probably won’t be much more than just a simple bypass, as it already do much better than stock.
I probably can do a file first, but doing these is hard when the spring is already soldered on. I might make another and probably just source some blank copper discs.
Who can help identify an LED? I was hoping to upgrade the LEDs in this X4. They’re 1.6x2.0mm and have the below footprint.
maybe this?
That looks like it exactly! You rock!!! Thank you
I’m not sure the larger pad is the correct dimension, but if it’s “close enough” it might work.
I wonder if the CREE XEG LEDs would also fit… 
The Cree LEDs just might work. The solder pads look very similar. I’m going to order a few of them from Digikey and see how it goes.
Thanks for telling me about those!!!
On paper they look good, I’ve not tested them as I’m waiting for someone smarter than me to make some tiny XEG MCPCBs to retrofit AA/AAA lights; the huge selection of colours available in the XEG family plus 3A drive current could be used for some really fun lights.
