Amech’s (or Aimac’s) SGT-4 thermal interface material is dirt cheap and oddly well-reviewed online, but that’s where the good news ends. According to Igor Wallossek at Igor’s Lab, it’s a chemically volatile mess that fails at cooling and actively damages the hardware it’s applied to.
SGT-4 is supposedly based on PMDS, a silicone compound, but testing suggests it’s been laced with an acetoxy-curing RTV silicone. This gloop reacts with moisture to release acetic acid, which is what gives it that sour stink. The same chemical is known to eat away at copper surfaces, leaving behind pitting, discolouration and that telltale metal-on-metal glue job that’s all but impossible to separate.
Despite those vinegar-scented emissions, the paste doesn’t even deliver passable cooling. Igor’s Lab measured thermal conductivity far below the numbers advertised by the manufacturer, blaming the corrosion for introducing even more air gaps between surfaces. Rather than filling micro-imperfections, this stuff seems to create fresh ones, like an acid-powered nesting kit for your CPU.
To make matters worse, once the paste cures, it behaves more like a construction adhesive than anything that belongs in a PC. The cooler and CPU bond together so tightly they’re nearly impossible to pull apart without risking damage to the board, the socket or your patience.
South Korean hardware forum Quasarzone is full of users complaining about erased CPU labels, copper turning green and pitted contact plates. While you’d expect a company to at least pretend to care, Amech has responded with personal insults, non-answers and vague assurances that the goop complies with RoHS and REACH. That’s irrelevant, of course, as those only deal with hazardous materials in unopened products, not the acid bombs they become once installed.
They repeatedly referred to Wallossek as just “a person from Germany”, apparently hoping to discredit the story by playing dumb. As of mid-October, the thermal paste community seems to have collectively binned any trust they once had in the website-less “brand” Amech.