A: Excellent Performance

No doubt this section will see the most visitor traffic, which is a real injustice to the information we've added throughout the other parts of this article. Regardless, hardcore overclockers and performance enthusiasts will enjoy the guidance our testing will provide them, and the thermal performance results will help them achieve the highest overclock and best stability possible. While I would feel perfectly safe working with any thermal material tested in this article, from the best to worst, my confidence lies within the knowledge of how insignificant TIM is on a properly prepared surface with good contact pressure. One high-profile overclocker (and Gigabyte GO OC 2009 champion) once told me that if the surfaces were lapped and polished as good as possible, and mounting compression was exceptional, then Thermal Interface Material would be an unnecessary component. He was right, because in a perfect condition (which is impossible to achieve) the processor and cooler would have metal-on-metal contact with nothing between them creating resistance. Since that scenario just isn't realistically possible, we have these products to provide excellent enthusiast cooling performance instead.

In the chart below, Benchmark Reviews has assembled those products receiving an "Enthusiast Grade" of A for excellent thermal conductivity performance compared to the other TIM products in our tests:

Each product tested received the curing time recommended (see below), or approximately one hour of thermal cycling prior to testing when no cure time was specified.

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