Tuniq TX-3 Thermal Paste Review

With a wide selection of thermal paste offered on the market today, let’s see how the latest Tuniq TX-3 compare.

Product on Review: Tuniq TX-3 Thermal Paste
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Tuniq
MSRP: Not specified
Street Price: £6.99

Following a whole line of successful cooling products, Tuniq have continuously strived on improving their products. Today we see this in the form of the new thermal grease from tuniq, the TX-3. In their own words, “TX-3 is the highest performing thermal compound in the industry, bar-none!”. Quite a bold statement so let’s put these claims to test.

Tuniq is a fairly young company that grew as a subdivision of Sunbeamtech. They took the cooling world by storm with their highly popular and stellar performing Tuniq Tower. Here is Tuniq’s story as found on the website:

Tuniq was formed as a division of Sunbeamtech and took on a whole new direction in product designs. We at Tuniq aim to provide authentic performance through a minimalist approach by stripping down the unnecessary components in product designs. Our research and development team consists of members who have over a decade of experience as well as young designers who are able to think outside of the box. It is this unique merge of experience and fresh ideas that enables us to bring to our customers such exquisite, elegant, top-quality products.

We feel that product design should be Zen-like: simple, functional, harmonious and without frails. Each product from Tuniq aims to combine the virtues of high performance, elegant design, and extraordinary value. When handling a Tuniq product, you will appreciate its impeccable finish and will be pleasantly amazed by its quality and performance.

With the multitude of awards and acclaims that each of our products has received, we have proven that our vision and approach is the right one and we will continue to provide our valued customers with new and better products.

We can agree that the products we have seen from them so far holds true to their words, so let’s see if the Tuniq TX-3 shares the same promise in a market that’s constantly becoming more competitive.

Packaging

The Tuniq TX-3 thermal paste syringe comes professionally packaged in a typical plastic covering.

On the front, we can see the tube itself with a brief description of what the thermal paste can offer.

The back cover is much more informative giving a detailed list of its features and specification, along with illustrations depicting how it differs from conventional pastes, to allow for its greater efficiency. It even has a table of preliminary results as compared with previous Tuniq offerings and a standard thermal grease.

The tube itself is about 9.5cm in length and contains 1ml of paste (3g). The specifications are also listed on the tube. One of the most striking features of the tube is a small clear area showing you how much of the paste is left. It’s a very simple and effective way of showing the user how much they have used until they need to get some more. I’m sure a lot of us have had this problem in the past where we were worried about whether a tube was on the verge of running out or not. I’d like to see more companies introducing this feature on their tubes.

The paste is of medium viscosity so it will spread thinly when applied, maximising contact and efficiency.

Features and Specifications

Let’s see what Tuniq have achieved in their quest to have the most thermally conductive paste.

Features (as seen on the back of the box):
•Extreme performance
•High stability and efficiency
•Not electrically conductive
•6.2W/mK Ultra High thermal conductivity for superior heat transfer
•Tends to form a thinner layer between CPU and heatsink than other grease even under low pressure
•Best solution for the heatpipe direct contact or heatpipe direct touch type CPU cooler (Ex: Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer)
•Helps the low pressure clip design of cooler to achieve better cooling performance
•RoHS compliant
•Low bleed under high pressure.

Specifications
Appearance/Grey
Operating temperature/-45˚C ~ 200˚C
Viscosity/6.2WmK
Specific Gravity/3.011 @ 25˚C
Volume/1ml (3g)

Test Setup

CPU – Intel Core i7 920 – 4ghz
RAM – 6GB (3x2GB) OCZ platinum DDR3 1333mhz
Motherboard – Biostar T-Power x58
Graphics card – Gainward 896MB GTX260 216
Power Supply – Enermax Revolution 85+ 850W
Cooling – Noctua SE 1366 NH-U12P
Hard Drive – Samsung F1 320GB
Western Digital Caviar WD3200AAKS 320GB
Drivers – ForceWare 185.66

Thermal pastes

Tuniq TX-3
Tuniq TX-2
Noctua NT H1
Arctic MX2
Thermolab Baram paste

Program Suite

Core Temp 0.99.5
LinX stress Test
PC Wizard

How I Tested

Each paste was applied as recommended by the manufacturers and were tested over a period of 48 hours to observe if they required any curing time. An initial test was done at stock (2.66ghz) speed and overclocked (4ghz) speed. The idle and load temperatures were measured using coretemp by looking at the minimum temperature while idling and the maximum temperature after 20 passes of LinX. This was repeated after 48 hours.

Due to varying temperatures, an average temperature was calculated and the ambient temperature was subtracted to obtain a delta value. This is presented in the graphs.

Test Results

CPU at 2.66ghz

Here we see the TX-3 providing the best load temperatures along with its predecessor, the TX-2. Even at idle, it nets excellent results compared to its competitors.

CPU at 4.0ghz

At 4ghz, it is the undisputed leader with the best idle and load temperatures. The TX-2 follows closely behind.

CPU at 2.66ghz after 48 hours

After 48 hours, all the thermal pastes gave similar results with the TX-3 having the lowest idle delta value.

CPU at 4.0ghz after 48 hours

Finally here, although the TX-3 has an outstanding idle delta value, at load it trails behind the other thermal pastes. However the difference in performance relative to the other ones is not as significant as the previous 4.0ghz delta value.

Curing time

Although all the thermal pastes tested required no curing time, there were some slight improvement in temperatures over the 2 day period. The TX3 showed the largest drop in temperature.

Surprisingly however, at load, the TX-3 didn’t perform as well as when it was first applied. It started out as the best performer but after 48 hours, it trailed the others. I’m not too sure why this happened considering the better idle temperatures. This could be merely discrepencies in the measurement which in this summer weather is very likely.

Conclusion

I have to hand it to Tuniq for creating such a fantastic product. Despite making some bold claims, they achieved exactly what they set out to do. With class leading performance, it has usurped not only its previous offerings but also its main competitors as the best Thermal paste on the market.

Throughout the testing, the TX-3 claimed some of the best results and I can safely say this will definitely be the paste I use in the future, over my previous favourite and highly popular Arctic MX2.

What Tuniq have achieved is to not only give us an excellent thermal paste but to also set itself as a major name in the cooling market which has recently been flooded with vast number of products from different manufacturers. Tuniq can definitely distinguish themselves from the rest.

At the moment, the only problem is availability but once it hits the UK market, I can see this becoming a favourite amongst enthusiast.

The Tuniq TX-3 thoroughly deserves the Vortez Hardware Gold Award.