SYY 157 "Thermal Interface Material" Review

[Etern4l]

I followed an interesting tip and recommendation of a new paste called SYY 157 that was provided in the Thermal Pastes thread. The product is marketed as rivaling the thermal conductivity of Phobya NanoGrease Extreme, which is what lured me in. It is available for an affordable couple of bucks from a Chinese brand on Amazon.

 

Executive summary: everyone likes a good deal, but in this case you get much less than you paid for, taking the waste of time into account the value is hugely negative.

 

The packaging was nice (spatula and spreading card included). The application looked perfect, I even waited the 15 min they strangely  recommended before applying the heatsink. Temps seemed fine right after application, but initially stealthy deterioration started basically right after, manifesting itself in progressively more instability. This resulted in enormous waste of time as I blamed the problems on everything but the paste, I couldn't imagine it could be so bad to cause the issues. After about 10 days it became clear something is wrong. Noticeably higher idle temps, instability on stock settings etc.

 

When I removed the heatsink, it felt like there was some gray talc sprinkled on the IHS. The paste almost turned into powder. 

Luckily I still had enough Phobya Nanogrease Extreme left, everything has been working great after the repaste so far. 

 

Now, the paste was used on a large desktop CPU, with around 270W of power going through it for very long periods of time, and temps in 80-90C range. It's possible, that the paste would deteriorate at a slower rate when used more casually, but I wouldn't risk it. 

 

SYY 157 Product Rating: 0% (absolute garbage, dangerous, bin on sight) 

[mido]

Interesting. Which apply method did u use?

[Etern4l]

Spread. It was perfect, and like I said - temps seemed very good immediately after application.

[jaybee83]

damn, stark contrast to all the super positive reviews in the thermal paste thread. crazy stuff, thanks for the input!

[Etern4l]

I don't think I've seen that many. Mainly one guy posting? I've found a couple of promising comments on reddit as well, but that's pretty much it. It was a gamble. I mean it could have been a bad batch or something, but that's just as unacceptable. Arctic just pulled MX-5 over consistency issues.

[jaybee83]

On 11/27/2022 at 12:48 AM, Etern4l said:

I don't think I've seen that many. Mainly one guy posting? I've found a couple of promising comments on reddit as well. I mean it could have been a bad batch or something, but that's just as bad. Arctic just pulled MX-5 over consistency issues.

 

ha, nevermind, i mixed it up with the Honeywell paste / pad 😄 

[Etern4l]

Yeah, the Honeywell pad looks promising, or at least well advertised. Was even worthy of a Linus review lol.

[jaybee83]

1 hour ago, Etern4l said:

Yeah, the Honeywell pad looks promising, or at least well advertised. Was even worthy of a Linus review lol.

 

ha ikr. good thing is, now i know that there actually IS something to that. especially with Zen4 having a pad instead of paste would make life way easier with those IHS ridges in terms of clean up. im now considering getting a sample and trying it out. best places to get it though? aliexpress?

[cylix]

1 hour ago, jaybee83 said:

 

ha ikr. good thing is, now i know that there actually IS something to that. especially with Zen4 having a pad instead of paste would make life way easier with those IHS ridges in terms of clean up. im now considering getting a sample and trying it out. best places to get it though? aliexpress?

Ebuy7. Just got some aswell 😅.  I already have the honeywell paste. Some people are saying the pad is better.

https://www.ebuy7.com/

 

I still have the paste intact. Wanted to use it on my clevo but that died😅. So ill put the paste on the desktop and when the pad arrives ill switch and try and see wich is better. A little test.

[jaybee83]

17 hours ago, cylix said:

Ebuy7. Just got some aswell 😅.  I already have the honeywell paste. Some people are saying the pad is better.

https://www.ebuy7.com/

 

I still have the paste intact. Wanted to use it on my clevo but that died😅. So ill put the paste on the desktop and when the pad arrives ill switch and try and see wich is better. A little test.

 

huh, so u went with the same source as LTT then 😄 just to clarify, PTM7950SP is the paste, correct? and PTM7950 is the pad? seems to be quite cheap though, just 2-3€ ?! that doesnt seem right... oooh nvm, that just depends on how large of a pad ure ordering, got it. prices go up to 80+ € haha

[cylix]

14 minutes ago, jaybee83 said:

 

huh, so u went with the same source as LTT then 😄 just to clarify, PTM7950SP is the paste, correct? and PTM7950 is the pad? seems to be quite cheap though, just 2-3€ ?! that doesnt seem right... oooh nvm, that just depends on how large of a pad ure ordering, got it. prices go up to 80+ € haha

Yes from ebuy7. The paste took 3  weeks i think to arrive so  the pad  will be the same.  Haha yes price look cheap at first after comes the surprise. I got a 80x80 for 21 euro. Think its enough for the 7900x. Dimensions of am5 is 70x70 right?

[jaybee83]

On 11/30/2022 at 8:29 PM, cylix said:

Yes from ebuy7. The paste took 3  weeks i think to arrive so  the pad  will be the same.  Haha yes price look cheap at first after comes the surprise. I got a 80x80 for 21 euro. Think its enough for the 7900x. Dimensions of am5 is 70x70 right?

 

actually way less, so could be barely enough for 4 applications in your case:

[Rofa1234]

2022 edition of SYY-157 is about 2 degrees worse, I think posted my results in the other thread.

 

SYY-157 2021 edition 24.9 25.6
76/80/79/76
74/81/79/78

SYY-157 2022 edition 25.1 25.6 25.7
75/82/78/78
79/83/81/81
76/83/80/81

 

Of course these are initial temp results and may not reflect longevity performance. I have seen a degradation on several pastes on my notebook but this is hard to compare. Maybe it's true that some of the pastes with a high thermal conductivity have worse longevity, it might be a tradeoff in the end.

edit:

Quote

 

Achieving a “high” thermal conductivity (in this case, let’s say 10W/mK+) is actually very easy – all you have to do is keep adding filler (metal alloy) until you achieve that level of conductivity. But thermal paste’s job is not solely to transfer heat – it is also a gap filler for the micro-imperfections between the surface of CPU and heatsink where oxygen might be trapped. If you add too much filler, you risk making the thermal paste too hard to spread, resulting in thick, uneven layers which result in poorer real-life performance. And because of the lack of base, high-filler thermal pastes will also degrade significantly faster when put through real use which will quickly result in poorer performance.

 

https://koolingmonster.com/insights/what-is-thermal-conductivity-and-is-it-always-good-for-thermal-paste?fbclid=IwAR0cViHs2gwALkozLO0KP2EMZSOXQoTKZIHg_d-8TFvFObvL3Rx-LyNEc2U

 

 

On a desktop there is also a pattern in some roundups that thick pastes do not work as good. Also the spreading is harder on a bigger desktop chip.

 

If I had to test on a desktop chip I would try out Kooling Monster KOLD-01. Because it's easier to spread than all my other top laptop pastes and they say this paste has been used in industrial servers where longevity is most important.

 

 

 

 

[Etern4l]

Phobya Nanogrease Extreme is doing great after the same 10 days. It's one of the thicker pastes BTW. It was also previously tested in the same system and fairly severe summer conditions, over a period of many months. Zero degradation.

 

The SYY-157 tube is in the trash now.

[Etern4l]

Phobya lasted much longer than SYY 157, but after about 6 weeks it needs to be changed as well. Pretty annoyed by this. Will try MX-6 next.

[mido]

On 1/19/2023 at 12:50 PM, Etern4l said:

Phobya lasted much longer than SYY 157, but after about 6 weeks it needs to be changed as well. Pretty annoyed by this. Will try MX-6 next.

You should try the honeywell pad

[Etern4l]

Yeah, planning on that. MX-6 wasn't too bad, but didn't quite cut it. Replaced with Alphacool Apex 17W/mK for now on bro @Papusan 's tip. Clearly much better. I also have Corsair XTM70 and Thermaltake TFX waiting to be tested as well.