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Is Your Silver-based Thermal Paste Really Silver?
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Jan 23, 2004 12:58 AM
from the critical-looks dept.
from the critical-looks dept.
strider69666 writes "Over at Overclockers.com they have a review of several thermal compounds that claim to have 99% pure silver content. 'I decided to test Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3, OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound, and CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease. This test was not conducted to test performance, but rather to determine if these compounds have Silver as an ingredient.' Using a professionally mixed testing solution, they found that several brands do not, in fact, contain any silver at all! So, are you getting what you are paying for?"
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bah (Score:5, Funny)
In my day we had to make thermal paste by grinding it down with stones.
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
Requires alchemy(2) and goldsmithing(10), fire crystal + silver ingot + beeswax = thermal paste
Parent
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
You had HEAVY ELEMENTS? In my day, the loose clouds of interstellar gas hadn't coalesced into star systems yet. All we had were hydrogen atoms and maybe a trace of helium around Christmas!
Parent
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
In my day we had nothing but the vacuum and had to wait for a universe to pop into existence before we could even begin to think about the existence of energy and matter.
Kids today
Parent
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
Forget silver paste.
Try the paste made from mithril mined by the local dwarves.
Parent
No (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
i call this the "grape nuts theory".
no grapes. no nuts. grape nuts.
Parent
OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Informative)
From the above site:
OCZ would like to take this time to address the recent article published at Overclockers.com, ( http://www.overclockers.com/articles938/ )which shows that OCZ Ultra 2 thermal compound has no silver content.
OCZ does not manufacture Ultra 2 thermal compound in house, it is provided by a foreign manufacturer with our specifications. Previous independent lab tests conducted at the request of OCZ have shown that the silver compound content in Ultra 2 is 25% by volume and 70% by weight.
In response to this article, OCZ has submitted another batch of Ultra 2 to a third party for extensive lab testing. This Independent lab report show's that the most recent batch of OCZ Ultra 2 indeed contains less than 1% silver by volume. While simultaneously we have received lab reports from an outside source indicating the silver content to be 30% by weight. This leads us to the conclusion that recent batch(s) of OCZ Ultra 2 from our supplier did not meet the agreed specifications.
We accept full responsibility for these problems and we will be seeking legal action against our supplier.
In order to help solve this problem we have contacted Arctic Silver Inc, and entered into a vendor agreement with them to supply OCZ thermal paste.
Beginning January 22nd 2004 we are issuing a full recall of any and all OCZ Ultra 2.
Any Customers who wish to return OCZ Ultra 2 thermal paste with an invoice will in exchange for their full or partially used tube(s) receive:
1- One (dependant on # of tubes returned) 3-gram OCZ thermal Compound (made by Arctic Silver Inc.) or one OCZ Dominator 2 Heatsink.
2- One OCZ EL DDR T-Shirt
3- One 10 dollar off rebate on any OCZ EL DDR Dual Channel Kit (at participating resellers)
Nice... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is disturbing that they had not caught this earlier, but I think that they are more than making up for their shortcomings.
I wish more organizations worked like this. Good word of mouth goes a long way on the Internet - see New Egg's success as an example.
Parent
Re:Nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder where the foreign manufacturer is though, and how easy they are to prosecute. Now I feel sorry for OCZ, because it looks like they're the ones getting the shaft.
I wonder if this is one of those nasty effects of outsourcing/exterior-suppliers that will become apparent over time, sneaky cost-cutting and lower accountability.
Parent
Re:Nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Nice... (Score:5, Interesting)
if it's indeed a surprise to them. i'd want to see their receipts and see if the amount they pay their supplier went down substantially on the no-silver material. it could be collusion.
in which case their actions are little more than "oh well, you caught us - can't blame us for trying!"
Good word of mouth goes a long way on the Internet - see New Egg's success as an example.
then maybe i should spread the word on how NewEgg fucked me on replacing my $600 digital camera and wouldn't return EVEN ONE of my e-mail contacts to them? (btw i originally heard about them through positive word of internet-mouth).
Parent
invoice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any Customers who wish to return OCZ Ultra 2 thermal paste with an invoice will in exchange for their full or partially used tube(s) receive:
1- One (dependant on # of tubes returned) 3-gram OCZ thermal Compound (made by Arctic Silver Inc.) or one OCZ Dominator 2 Heatsink.
2- One OCZ EL DDR T-Shirt
3- One 10 dollar off rebate on any OCZ EL DDR Dual Channel Kit (at participating resellers)
Sounds cool, but how many people will have saved a receipt?
Parent
Ahhhhh.... we got a bum supplier...... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a little screw-up at the (prob. offshore) supplier, I'm sure that OCZtech will be checking ALL the future batches...at least for another week or so.
Now would be the best time to get a tube. This weeks batch will prob. be right on the spec.
Parent
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Funny)
This is a situation where a company's extremely quick action--which is probably going to reach virtually everyone who even knows about the problem (the parent is still "above the fold" here on
Hell, I don't buy the stuff, but if I did, I'd switch to theirs on the basis of this response alone.
1. Sell bogus silver paste
2. Get exposed on Overclockers
3. Masterfully respond to problem
4. Profit!
Parent
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Some people (usually overclockers) buy these "silver" compounds because they think it conducts heat better than other materials - and it probably does - but practically it isn't any better than the others, there's supposed to be _very_ little of this stuff in between the CPU and cooler, so any difference with any other compound that is fluid enough to fill all the cracks it's supposed to, is very small, and probably not even noticeable.
If people are purchasing this compound because it is "99% silver" and place it inbetween the CPU and the heatsink, isn't there more at stake here? I mean what if there were damaged CPUs due to the usage of this compound instead of one with 99% silver?
I don't see how one could fry their CPU (assuming the compound isn't useless in the more important aspects) with this, so what if it makes a 1'C difference, the thing would've fried anyway
If you push your system over the limits it's designed to go, you should monitor it, instead of trusting some magical "silver bullet" will save you - and if you don't keep an eye of those temperatures, you're an idiot. And deserve your new keychain that used to be an expensive CPU.
Parent
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as the danger of putting a potentially conductive paste on top of your CPU, yes it can be dangerous, if you dont know what you are doing. The ceramic core of the cpu is the ONLY part that needs any paste. Covering the whole chip can short-circuit the bridges and other circuitry on that surface, and even though there is a protective layer of laquor, there is still a risk. Adding too much can allow it to ooze out onto the motherboard and short something else, possibly the CPU pins. Too much compound will also actually insulate the chip rather than cool it, as it adds more material that the heat has to conduct through. During my stint as a repair tech, I had a few fried CPU's from people not reading directions/having a clue, and covering the entire surface of the CPU with the stuff. All the paste is supposed to do is eliminate any air gap between CPU and heatsink. Newer CPU's mihgt come with a metal shim on top of the chip (Ala the old K6-2's), giving a wider dispersion path for the heat to travel before jumping to the heatsink through the paste.
If you buy almost ANYTHING with a warantee, it only warantees itself, not what it might do to other things even if used properly. Is your car waranteed against getting into an accident? No. The lack of silver will reduce its conductivity, but the rest of the components in the compound still conduct failry well. The worst that would happen is a cpu might run warmer than it would with the silver. If your system is so critical that lack of silver burns up the CPU, you probably voided a different warantee already (Overclock something??).
Be thankfull a company is actually claiming responsibility and is willing to do SOMETHING about it, rather than ignore/deny etc. Stop complaining about how little they are doing, after all how much did you pay for their product vs how much this has to be costing them?
Tm
ps: I bet they are gona take the cost of this recall out of their supplier, seeing as the supplier sold them something claiming to have x% silver, but breached contract giving them 0%. Must have saved the supplier a load of $$ to not put that silver in, but guess they will pay for it now.
Parent
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Reading in-between the lines of a OCZ recall. (Score:5, Funny)
It is not really OCZ's fault, we don't actually make the stuff. OCZ is a victum just like you! Someone in China did it and we couldn't have possibly known because we outsourced our quality control as well. This required us to trust a single independent lab test to be representive of the quality of all batches of OCZ Ultra 2 thermal compound.
Now that we have been caught with our pants down, we have submitted a second batch to our outsourced quality control and confirmed that it is all China's fault. But we would like to point out that the compound did contain 30% silver by weight. We have reached the conclusion that this recent batch (actually, it might be multiple batchs but we can't afford to test each one to be sure) did not meet with the OCZ unenforced specifications.
Instead of giving your money back, we will define the steps below as "accepting full responsiblity" and would like to point out that we are taking legal action since it really is China's fault.
Beginning today we are issuing an incomplette recall of all full or partially used OCZ Ultra 2 (if you still have an empty OCZ Ultra 2 then your S.O.L. and get nothing).
1) The tube which now sells for $9 on NewEgg (and we would like to point out that the Tech Zone rated as cooling 2 degrees C below Arctic Silver) can be exchanged for Arctic Silver which you could have just bought for $7 -OR- you can get a OCZ heat sink that we need to get rid of anyways since it is discontinued!
But wait... there is more...
2) A one-size-fits-all T-shirt featuring the OCZ logo so you can be a walking advertizement for OCZ until it falls apart the third time you wash it. The fact that there is not the cotten/polyester blend we specified can not be OCZ's fault because after all... OCZ does not have it's own quality assurence and in the end everything is China's fault.
Oh... but wait... there is even more...
3) $10 off another of our products which also comes complette with no quality assurence!
Thank you for getting scre... doing business with OCZ. Remember, if it is not OCZ technology then you might actually be getting what you payed for.
Parent
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Interesting)
I know, I know, to forgive is divine, but attitudes like yours send the message "it is OK to be irresponsible as long as you say you're sorry."
Am I off-base?
Parent
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because acts like this one, with the compensation levels they are displaying should be a guiding light to all companies.
Accidents happen, they were duped, even after asking for testing to be done on the product.
I can put you $1,000 on the gamble that CompUSA do NOTHING about their product and basically sweep the problem under the mat.
Using OCZ products shows CompUSA and companies of their ilk that consumers appreciate it when we are treat like people instead of accounts.
The T-Shirt gets me. LAN party talking point anyone? Word of mouth at its best.
Parent
no - he got it wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
thank you, thank you. i'll be here all night. tip your wait staff.
Ok (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ok (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
o boy (Score:5, Funny)
I want to speak to the manager! (Score:5, Funny)
I want a free goddam coffee and an apple pie right now or I'll sue!
Re:I want to speak to the manager! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I want to speak to the manager! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Overclocked... (Score:5, Funny)
You're telling me a site on overclocking [overclockers.com] has to cut off the user limit? Their servers aren't overclocked enough to handle it?
Re:Overclocked... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Please, actually think about what you say... (Score:5, Informative)
In addition, the author claims that similar claims were made on the label of OCZ paste. Judging by the reaction from the people at OCZ (or the people that claim to be OCZ) and his accuracy in the rest of the test, I have no reason to doubt him.
Please, think before you spout the tired, cynical rhetoric about shady advertisement.
it doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a measure of the heat conductivity of some stuff (watts/in. degree C)
air - 0.00076
nylon - 0.00635
heat sink goop - 0.0168
brick - 0.0175
glass - 0.02
silver heat sink goop - 0.0282
alumina - 0.7
steel - 1.7
silicon - 2.5
brass - 3.05
aluminum - 5.5
gold - 7.4
copper - 10.0
silver - 10.6
diamond - 16.0
Note that any heat sink goop is a terrible conductor of heat. The only thing it is better than basically is air. Thus, heat sink goop is only to be used to fill microscopic voids between the heat sink and the CPU. If you actually have a layer of it between the heatsink and the CPU it will insulate the chip a LOT and make it overheat.
Thus, there is no reason to use a lot of heatsink goop, it isn't critical that you use good goop. It is VERY CRITICAL that you have good enough heatsink pressure that your heatsink and CPU come in direct contact, with as much as possible heat sink goop squeezed out. There shouldn't even be a visible film of it after heat sink removal, just small pockets in the imperfections on the chip.
Oh, all these figures are stolen from "Hot Air Rises and Heat Sinks: Everything You Know About Cooling Electronics is Wrong" by Tony Kordyban. The book, BTW is just okay. I don't really recommend it to the average person.
well technically.... (Score:5, Interesting)
75-80% silver content by weight
(from CompUSA's website, regarding said silver compound)
Wouldn't it be funny if CompUSA responded with:
"Our product is advertised correctly. Before micronization, the silver that was used was rated at 97% percent pure. The silver was then put through our micronization process and added to a substrate to create our product compound."
When asked what substrate was used
"The substrate is a a type of aerogel."
Well that would explain why the compound is 70%-80% silver by weight!
Not 99% silver content (Score:5, Insightful)
From the Slashdot article:
Over at Overclockers.com they have a review of several thermal compounds that claim to have 99% pure silver content.
The claim is that the silver content is 70% by weight, and that the silver used is 99.9% pure. Not that the compounds have 99% silver content,
If you want 99% silver on top of your CPU, try spreading some silverware on top of it.
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:So.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, class-action lawsuits are the end-all solution.
Short of that:
That's the FTC's job, but they don't seem interested in reports from the public.
I prefer the Better Business Bureau. I've filed a few complaints, and so far I've always gotten results.
Big companies don't even bother to show-up for small claims court appearances. So you could get up to $5,000 via a default ruling if/when they don't show.
Parent
Re:Cost of Silver? Copper an alternative? (Score:5, Informative)
"Pure silver has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of all metals, and possesses the lowest contact resistance"
From http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/t
Parent
Re:Cost of Silver? Copper an alternative? (Score:5, Informative)
Please, someone tell me what is the point of blabbing misinformaton about things of which you are utterly ignorant?
Silver has far higher thermal conductivity than gold.
Gold, 320 W/m/K
Silver 430 W/m/K
To the extent gold is used in microchips, it is for other reasons.
Parent
Re:Cost of Silver? Copper an alternative? (Score:5, Informative)
What gold does do best is resist corrosion, which is why it is often used for connectors. Silver and copper both oxidize very rapidly, causing bad connections, but gold does not.
Parent
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:5, Informative)
No, actually silver is #1, copper is #2, and gold is #3.
Silver 430 W/m/K
Copper 400 W/m/K
Gold 320 W/m/K
Aluminum 235 W/m/K
Parent
Re: Silver is better than copper or aluminum (Score:5, Informative)
(In Watts per meter per degree Kelvin)
Silver ~420 W/mK
Pure Copper ~400 W/mK)
Pure Aluminum ~240 W/mK)
If you REALLY wanted some fancy shit, try a diamond paste. Diamond is like 2000+ W/mK. Really good at transfering heat. (No, I don't know if anyone actually makes the stuff).
Oh, and just for reference, air is about 0.025 w/mK, and water is somewhere around 0.6ish.
So you could use a copper paste, but it wouldn't be quite as good as the Silver.
Parent
Re:Cost of Silver? Copper an alternative? (Score:5, Interesting)
Copper is a great conductor of heat, but not as good as silver.
Copper: 402 k(W/mK) @ 300 kelvin
Silver: 430 k(W/mK) -- 7% better (in certain conditions).
Diamond beats them all at 895 k(W/mK).
Actually, there's a superfluid form of Helium-2 which, at already very low temperatures, blows anything else away in terms of heat conductivity. Of course, since it has to already be near absolute zero in temperature to have reasonably thermal conductivity, it would probably not make the best thermal "grease."
Parent
Re:Cost of Silver? Copper an alternative? (Score:5, Informative)
Last time I checked, that isn't the case. Silver has the best thermal conductivity of all elemental metals (at least all common ones - I don't actually have an extensive list in front of me). Slightly, but not drastically, better than that of copper. And with respect to other to other responses to the parent, the conductivity of aluminum, while better than, say, steel, pales in comparison to that of copper or silver.
See FrostyTech [frostytech.com], or Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] if you don't believe me.
The use of aluminum is a consequence of price and of system requirements. You can cool a Pentium II, for instance, adequately with an aluminum heatsink because it doesn't put out as much heat. Modern processors, on the other hand, put out more watts of energy which needs to be rapidly sucked away from the cpu and dissipated, so a heatsink with a copper core at the very least tends to be the norm.
Why don't we see more silver heatsinks? Price, of course. Copper is already relatively expensive, but a big block of high purity silver is out of the price range of most people. At that point water cooling probably has a better price performance ratio.
Parent
silver candy decorations have real silver (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Overclocking not for the serious geek (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Overclocking not for the serious geek (Score:5, Insightful)
You're wrong.
Moderately overclocked systems are not useless. Sure, you shouldn't use overclocked CPU in a mission critical server (doh), but they make perfectly fine real-world desktops, I'm typing this on one and it's stable as a rock. It's predecessor(s) were as well. The speed difference is nothing staggering, and maybe it only saved twenty bucks from the next speed grade, but so what?
This is not black and white so that something's either at stock speed or so much over the limits it's extremely unstable, you go for a speed that's stable under full load - and you test that it really is stable, or bit under that to be sure.
Of course overclocked to the extreme rig with LN2 cooling or something equally stupid doesn't have any use what-so-ever - but they're intended to, people do that as a hobby, or to compete with eachother.
Parent
Re:ARTICLE TEXT (Score:5, Funny)
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