I got myself some panasonic pads for testing as well. I'm testing it currently on my R7 1700.
I picked "perfectly fitting" EYGS0404ZLMP 36 x 38 mm pads but there was no info anywhere (except for digikey what I found out afterwards) that they actually look like this:
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This hole is a disaster for the OCD, but it kind of works anyway, at least it's worth testing.
Here's what you get for $20 before tax - equivalent of IC graphite 40 mm pad:
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I got two "pieces" just in case and each of them was a package of 10. Neat.
Here's how it looks on top of Haswell:
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I'll try to make some photos on my R7 1700 when I'll get some time to take it apart.
There's few things to note with those Panasonic pads:
1) Take a bigger sheet rather than pads like I did (duh).
2) There are 28 and 20 W/mK variants of those or there are two versions of the datasheet that differ by this number. I couldn't figure out which is which. If the hole in the middle isn't the reason for not performing perfectly as the paste, I'm betting that the ones I got are the 20 W/mK type.
3) Back mounted coolers are a pain to install with this - you either have to glue it to the IHS with a bit of paste (which kind of defeats the purpose) or you have to somehow install this upside down landing the motherboard onto the cooler. I believe there are some variants of those pads that are adhesive from one side, so it would be nice to have something like that simply attached to the cooler.
Performance-wise the ones that I got feel slightly worse (by few degrees) than the paste on the idle/small loads and comparable on full load. I'll have to test it for some time however to get a better feeling on that statement.
Interesting tech. I hope that those IC graphite pads will be available in Europe soon so I can see how much of a difference they make.
I wish they had the variant without the hole in the middle and proper datasheet stating which are 28 W/mK and which are 20W/mK...
