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Asus ROG stock thermal pad specs? And some other related questions.

SinisterDev85
Level 11
Hello ROG community!
I've been curious if anyone happen to know the specs on the thermal pads that Asus uses on the ROG boards? Specifically the thickness of the pads used, especially on the VRM's, and also I'd really like to know what the thermal conductivity of the stock pads is? Im going to be building a new PC this week and doing a teardown of an older Hero Viii mobo for routine maintenance, and i was thinking of swapping out the old thermal pads with something of a higher W/mK rating. I know that many average quality pads are around 5 W/mK , but I've seen some nice thermal pads online boasting as high as 17 W/mK thermal conductivity. This is something I haven't looked into much, so im curious if anyone knows, or has tested swapping out old pads for new ones with superior TC and observed the results?
ASUS ROG Z790 Apex Encore | i9 14900ks | | G. Skill Trident Z5 8000 | 2x WD SN850x 4gb | Asus Strix RTX 4080 OC| Asus ROG Thor 1200w | Windows 11 Pro
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Korth
Level 14
Might be different thermal interface materials on different motherboards. Might even be different materials on different parts of the same boards.

I don't know ASUS thermal pads, but their thermal paste is some kind of generic industrial-grade bulk stuff. Some people automatically disdain it and do a complete repaste with whatever leet stuff they prefer, some of these report substantial (even implausible) performance gains and some report nothing but problems and nightmares. My personal experience across maybe a dozen ASUS mobos and ASUS GPU cards (but no ASUS laptops) is that their paste does a good enough job and keeps doing a good enough job for several years - those I've repasted all used some sort of sticky pink goop. I should point out that I'm not an aggressive overclocker, I do okay but I prefer "rock solid" machines which can run unattended, uninterrupted, overclocked hot and heavy punishment for days nonstop ... with minimum downtime ... so I prefer robust TIMs which can handle the abuse without cooking off, even if they don't perform as magnificently as others.

I expect that ASUS is more concerned with consistency than with cost-cutting, they'll choose TIMs which fit their spec (whatever that is) and fit their tooling and are proven to last across the entire warranty period with minimal flaws or faults or deviations, that's all.

(TIMs are big business, and premium/elite TIM brands are fiercely competitive business. There's lots of review, testing, and comparison sites online - although, as always, it's very difficult to find any which are truly unbiased. I and others have written/argued much about TIMs in these forums before, lol, but the short version is that any premium-brand TIM is better than any El Cheapo TIM and the differences in measured temps between top performers seems to basically amount to less than one or two degrees, at most. Enthusiasts tend to champion their favourite TIMs quite zealously.)
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

SinisterDev85
Level 11
Ive tried various TIM's over the years. Ive been extremely pleased with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. Its even better than the Gelid Extreme i used for quite a while. Truly impressive stuff. Ive tried and tested many pastes, but thermal pads really are a bit of a grey area for me. Haven't really gotten to experiment with many pads. I did notice that Thermal Grizzly makes their own (which can kinda pricey) and some others boasting impressive thermal conductivity (for pads at least), like Fujipoly who make a variety pads rated all the way up to 17 w/mK! They're also pretty pricey...

Chances are I'm goin to end up keeping the Maximus Hero XI I ordered. Unless the Apex gets an official release date very soon and isn't too much more expensive. And I figured since Im goin to be doing all this work on the new build and my H8 Alpha build, that maybe I would replace the stock thermal pads on the XI's vrm heatsink to something with superior thermal conductivity outright.
Im interested in other people's input on their experiences with replacing vrm thermal pads. Heck I even wondered if I could replace the vrm pad with Kryonaut paste haha. But that would likely depend on the size of the gap between the two surfaces. I wouldn't mind seeing the results of comparing stock temps and temps after swapping..

Wanted to mention more, but Im falling asleep at the keyboard lol...
ASUS ROG Z790 Apex Encore | i9 14900ks | | G. Skill Trident Z5 8000 | 2x WD SN850x 4gb | Asus Strix RTX 4080 OC| Asus ROG Thor 1200w | Windows 11 Pro

SinisterDev85
Level 11
Well, im not entirely sure on what the thermal conductivity of Asus's thermal pads for their VRM's, but since I got my board in today, I figured I'd share this information with the community. I took off the heatsink and measured the pads with my calipers. I was surprised to see that it looks like they are 2mm thickness. I figured this might be helpful for anyone else considering swapping the pads for superior ones. 76930
ASUS ROG Z790 Apex Encore | i9 14900ks | | G. Skill Trident Z5 8000 | 2x WD SN850x 4gb | Asus Strix RTX 4080 OC| Asus ROG Thor 1200w | Windows 11 Pro