Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut Thermal Pad Mini-Review (compared to...

Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut Thermal Pad Mini-Review (compared to Innovation Cooling Thermal Pad)

Hello I wanted to put my thoughts out about the Carbonaut Thermal Pad that Thermal Grizzly recently released. It’s a direct competitor to Innovation Cooling’s Graphite Thermal Pad which serves the same function - a reusable thermal pad that can replace thermal paste.

First the juicy benchmark numbers

Test: 125W CPU heat load, max fan speeds with NH-D15. Max temps taken after 5 minutes. Average of 3 mounts.

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Nothing (no paste or pad): 78.9C

Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut Thermal Pad: 70.4C

Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pad: 69.6C

Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste: 66.4C

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You can see the Innovation Cooling pad and the Thermal Grizzly pad perform almost identically. They are both about 4C hotter than thermal paste which is not bad at all.

So performance is not bad, but no improvement to Innovation Cooling, in fact it seems the Carbonaut performs slightly worse.

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Tearing

I actually ordered two of these Carbonaut pads. The first one I had to order from the UK because nobody in the US was selling it.

It arrived looking like this: https://i.imgur.com/C0HKNMM.png

Lots of tears all around the sides and in pretty bad shape. It was also outside of the inner container it was supposed to be in during shipping, so I figured it had been damaged from being shipped all the way from the UK to the US.

I finally found a US seller on Amazon who could ship it to me, so I ordered another one. The second one came looking like this: https://i.imgur.com/5MLJF2N.png

Much better although it did have a tiny tear in one of the corners. Not a big deal though so I went ahead and tested it.

Mounts and Dismounts and More Tearing

My test procedure was to do 3 mounts and dismounts of the CPU cooler (NH-D15) to see if there would be any variation in temperatures between each mount. The thermal paste actually had a 2C difference between one of the mounts, which shows that you never quite know how well your thermal paste is spreading. Both of the pads had very reliable temperatures - only a .2C difference between mounts for the Carbonaut and zero difference between mounts for the Innovation Cooling Pad. The pads basically always stay mounted the same unlike thermal paste which can spread unpredictably.

I ran into a couple problems after mounting and dismounting the Carbonaut Pad. The first is it stuck to the CPU cooler after being removed and left a weird residue on the CPU cooler. Not a big deal, but seemed strange for a pad that was supposed to be reusable - it shouldn’t be leaving anything behind.

After the second dismount of the Carbonaut, I ran into a big issue - a huge chunk of its corner was now missing: https://i.imgur.com/1vkiC9T.png

It looks like it somehow got torn off during the dismount and the missing piece was nowhere to be seen. Kinda scary considering these pads are electrically conductive which means if they touch the rest of your parts they could cause issues. That missing piece could be anywhere in my system, causing issues down the line, although it seems to be working fine right now.

After that second dismount, I decided to stop testing the Carbonaut and just record the results because I wasn’t about to risk even more tearing and it wouldn’t be accurate.

The Problem and Conclusion

I think the Carbonaut is just way too thin and fragile. The Innovation Cooling Pad is relatively stiff, like a thin hardened piece of plastic, while the Carbonaut is more like super thin fabric that folds and tears easily. If Thermal Grizzly can fix this issue and maybe improve the performance beyond Innovation Cooling’s offering, then it could do well, but right now it just seems like Carbonaut is the inferior product.

Carbonaut also sells for about $16, while Innovation Cooling sells for about $10. Looks like the Carbonaut loses on price as well, making it an even worse proposition.

The idea of these pads is great - a reusable thermal paste replacement which can potentially last forever without degradation. You don’t have to worry about the mess of thermal paste, cleaning it up after every dismount, or making sure you spread it correctly - the pad just stays the same every time. However it looks like only one of these offerings is a good stable solution - the Innovation Cooling Pad. The Carbonaut just has too many issues right now to earn a recommendation.

Product Links

Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut (LGA1151 Size): https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Grizzly-Carbonaut-Pad-0-2/dp/B07PHN2ZNY/

Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pad (LGA1151 Size): https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Cooling-Graphite-Thermal-Pad/dp/B07CKVW18G/

from Daily Technology News http://bit.ly/2HW7YWU
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