Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut vs. Kryonaut Extreme in the test - showdown of two identical pastes, legend formation and marketing

Today I have to do it again and I hope Thermal Grizzly will forgive me (gur, we’ve already talked about it). But after I was asked again and again how the normal Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut would differ from the Kryonaut Extreme and some readers and colleagues even swore to me that the Extreme was so much better because the price was also an indicator If so, I have to write something about it and clarify it. Because feeling something subjectively (of course also about the price and the creation of social media legends) and being able to actually compare something exactly in the laboratory are still two different things. It’s just stupid when both have the same shoe size and the same manufacturer on the label. But I don’t want to spoil everything right away, I just knew before the test how it would turn out today. But today it’s not about subjective feelings, but about real facts.

Speaking of size: Thermal Grizzly has really cleverly managed to prevent direct price comparisons to some extent, as there are no uniform and identical container sizes for both pastes and you can therefore also make a direct price comparison per gram. The larger the container, the cheaper the price per gram. But there are also reasons why the Extreme is a little more expensive than the “normal” Kryonaut, but that has nothing to do with the actual performance. Of course, I spoke to Roman Hartung about it several times and in the end we agreed that the certain price difference (in addition to clever marketing and great packaging) actually has purely technical reasons. In the end, everyone has to decide for themselves whether both prices are justified; that’s not my responsibility.

Measurement of bulk thermal conductivity

The fact is that both pastes are the same and yet unequal. And that has nothing to do with the color, which is just a gimmick anyway. But today’s test is a good example of how a good matrix, i.e. the binder used and the manufacturing process, can determine the actual performance of the pastes. Certainly no one has been able to prove this so precisely in this form, so in a sense it is a kind of first.

Let’s first compare the two measurement protocols. We see that the determined values for the so-called bulk thermal conductivity in W/m K, i.e. that of the pure paste without the contact resistance to the surrounding surfaces such as the die or IHS and the cooler base, are 3.2 W/m K are approximately the same if rounded to the first decimal place. The normal user would now conclude that the pastes would perform roughly the same, because they contain identical thermally conductive particles in almost the same amount. So much for the theory with a clear Jain.

The real difference lies in the effective thermal resistance and also the effective thermal conductivity, as I measure it, and of course the heat flow in practice from A to B across all layers and bodies. Because this is much closer to reality and shows differences that you would not otherwise see. The best example of this is the so-called interface resistance, i.e. the heat transfer resistance at the contact surfaces. But I won’t repeat that again, there are the basics of measurement linked below. But we can already see that the Kryonaut Extreme has a slightly lower value here. What does it do? We’ll see that later…

Kryonaut Extreme

Let’s now briefly come to the test setup, which in the future I will no longer insert as text and images into the articles, but for which I have written specially suitable basic articles including an introduction to the equipment and the measuring methods, to give me and you a little to save redundancy. If you would like to read or refresh your knowledge, please use the following links to the two measurement setups for ASTM D5470-17 with the Nanotest TIMA5 and LIBS including microscopy with the Keyence VX-7100 and EA-300: