Luxia Le

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At the moment, my computer is in a spot where it really needs an upgrade. However, it’s in a weird spot where a single upgrade to my computer isn’t really worth doing. At this point, it’s been almost a decade and all the parts need to be removed and replaced with new ones. So, in the absence of $2,800–3,000 spare change to completely replace every part in my PC, I opted to try something new when I found that my computer was struggling to run my all-time favorite game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022). (No, that’s not actually my favorite game of all-time, but I did enjoy the time I spent with it.)

I was having trouble with my CPU overheating while I was playing the game. It wouldn’t outright crash my computer, but it was getting pretty close. So, I opted to replace my thermal paste with a diamond compound and reseat my heatsink to see if I could squeeze a few degrees out for a few dollars.

Diamond Thermal Paste: What Is It, Exactly?

Diamond thermal paste is, like the name implies, thermal paste infused with diamond dust. Diamonds have incredibly high thermal conductivity. That means that they absorb heat at a rapid rate. The idea behind diamond thermal paste is that by infusing the paste with diamond dust, you increase the thermal conductivity of the paste. Higher thermal conductivity means that the paste will be able to transfer heat from the CPU to the heatsink more efficiently and result in lower CPU temperatures.

The science here all checks out in theory.

What Is Thermal Paste Normally Made Of?

Most budget thermal pastes are made with silicone, which doesn’t actually have a particularly notable thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity of natural silicone is around 2.3 W/cm-K, which isn’t that great. Silicone rubbers are thermally insulative, meaning they prevent heat transfer.

The purpose of silicone thermal pastes is to create a seamless connection between the surface of the CPU and the surface of the heatsink. By filling the gaps—what would be air, which has a thermal conductivity of 0.24 W/cm-K—with a solid, we can more efficiently move the heat between the two surfaces.

Does Diamond Thermal Paste Work?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the screenshots to prove it. So, you’ll have to take me at my word when I say my CPU was hitting temps in the 90° Celsius range. It was bad. The processors were throttling. The fan was running a million rotations per scond. Every part of my computer was screaming for help.

However, there are two factors to my cooling journey. The first is the diamond thermal paste. The second is that when I went to replace my thermal paste, I actually found that my fan had become slightly dislodged. So, I had to reseat my fan, too.

Thus, it’s hard for me to say whether the diamond thermal paste actually made a difference because there were two major variables that were affecting my CPUs heat transfer. However, I will say that since using the diamond thermal paste and reseating my heatsink, my CPU has never run cooler! It rarely rises above 70° Celsius, staying nice and cool (in CPU terms, at least!)

As you can see from this screenshot of CoreTemp, my computer’s CPU is running nice and cool. The screenshot was taken after running Call of Duty for over thirty minutes during a high-stress moment. The CPU is running low temperatures despite processing huge amounts of data for the game. You can see that my CPU is still stressed as the max readings taken during this session were still above 80° Celsius, but it’s running relatively cool even while actively playing one of the most bloated and poorly optimized games on the market.