[MEDIA=imgur]0979sFC[/MEDIA]
I purchased and tested out this thermal pad.
Conclusion: It made absolutely no difference. Not worth it.
Unit was purchased via Amazon with the Linus TT link.
Purchased the 30x30 which is perfectly sized for the 8700K IHS. Compared to Noctua's NT-H1, on the LP53 heatsink/A9x14 fan combo, the temperature difference was virtually identical.
The installation was straight forward. Clean off the old thermal paste with alcohol, drop in the graphite pad, install the heatsink back in.
I used a pair of tweasers to handle the pad itself. Never touched it with fingers. I noticed that the pad will show an indent imperfection where my tweasers touched the material (like memory foam, but it does not recovery to the original form)- leading me to believe that this is to help "fill-in" those surfaces with micro holes and groves as the heatsink is tighten down. Because of this, reusability is to be questioned.
For science's sake, someone could try unmounting and remounting the pad several times to see if thermals gets worse over time since then the pad would be completely flattened out and would no longer fill in those holes.
Overall, not worth it.
Temps were determined using Prime95 26.6
