After testing the Arctic Cooling MX-2 last time, we wanted to see how if the MX-3 thermal grease was really better or not. Thanks to Arctic Cooling for sending us a 4g syringe of their MX-3 thermal compound for testing. Although, thermal compounds are a very small part of any cooling setup, they are extremely crucial. They helps to better connect the heatsink with the CPU to transfer heat effectively out.

If you don't use the right thermal paste/grease/compound, you may not be able to achieve the cooling power that you would with it. The MX-2 did really well in our tests so let's see how the MX-3 holds up against it and the Noctua NT-H1 compounds.

(click image to enlarge)

TEST SYSTEM
We will test this on the same system that we tested the MX-2 and NT-H1 on for consistency :

Enclosure : AZZA Helios 910R Mid Tower Case
Processor : AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
Motherboard : Asus M2N-E
Video Card : PNY Verto GeForce 7600 GS 256MB PCI-e
Hard Drive : Western Digital 320 GB SATA
Cooling : Spire TherMax II CPU Cooler
Power Supply : Dynex 400-watt
Operating System : Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise
Memory : 2 x Corsair 1GB

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