Artic Silver thermal compound

Has anyone used Arctic Silver instead of regular grease for Convergence modules? I wonder if it makes a difference in the compared to the regular white stuff.

Reply to
LB
Loading thread data ...

--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
**THE-RFI-EMI-GUY**

That's very interesting.

Loads of people into 'modding' computers, always choose arctic silver over any other compound or paste.

Is it just marketing hype and the reputation?

Thermal conductivity is about 8.4 for arctic silver, a quick search on one of my chinese supplier's website were selling a silver compound with TC of 4.7mW/K.

Does this mean the cheaper one has a higher heat capacitance than arctic silver?

Reply to
gabe

Probably, think of the typical overclocking crowd, very few of them are engineers, people will buy all sorts of snake oil if they percieve it'll get them that extra .02%.

Reply to
James Sweet

Yes, have a look here at Tom's Hardware

formatting link

Wayne

Reply to
Wayne

Not so much rough, LARGE. Look at an Athlon processor and you can see the mating surface is about a square inch, and it's supposed to have 23 POUNDS of force applied to it. This is of course the reason that alignment is so critical.

This surface is so large that you can't even begin to approach 23 pounds per square inch. Some manufacturers are giving up on screwing them down because you need to almost strip the threads out of aluminum to get the force. It could also warp the device, and in some cases the heatsink ! These things range from approx. 8-20 square inches. Multiply that by 23 and see what you get.

To the OP: If you are trying to do the optimum job there are bigger fish to fry than what brand of goop you use, on these larger mating surfaces it MUST be applied in a bead running directly between the mounting holes, DO NOT spread it out, that causes air pockets. If the Arctic is lower in viscosity then it might be a real good alternative, and the lower the better, but you better watch one thing, does it become glue after awhile ? The optimum repair does not screw up a subsequent repair. I've had to use a hammer to release the chips from the heatsink, and if this stuff makes a better bond it might be worse. I think I'll stick with the white stuff for this application.

I don't mean processors, I mean those big STK chips. It's not quite apples and oranges, it's more like pears and kiwi.

JURB

Reply to
ZZactly

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.