Is Your Silver-based Thermal Paste Really Silver? 788
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?"
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
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.
Surface tension (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
Overclocking not for the serious geek (Score:4, Insightful)
The overclocking thing bewilders me. These overclockers only push there cpu's to the limit so they can see a performance gain in the latest version of Quake.
You can't overclock a cpu on a pc or a server that has any real use what-so-ever.
Imagine overclocking the cpu on you employers mail server, then it becomes unstable and corrupts half the data!
-Haxx
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Overclocking not for the serious geek (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:So.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a big misnomer that companies rarely show up and you'll win your $5000. Every first semester law class (well, the two 100 level classes I took did) will teach you that, except in traffic court, every civil lawsuit is guaranteed at least one appeal. Small claims court doesn't allow for lawyers, and so corporations will no-show to small claims court, and then appeal with their army of attorneys. Sometimes there will be a settlement that involves a non disclosure which is why we don't here about it on Slashdot.
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I like silver compound because it's shiny. I like shiny things... (also it's thinner, so you can get a thin layer on your core. But Thermalright suggests that you get a good-sized layer on your core and heatsink, so maybe thin isn't good. I don't really know.)
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Nice... (Score:4, Insightful)
I got a tube of some sort of thermal goop when I bought a new fan for my video card (the old one was spalling or got a dented ball bearing or something).
I spread the goop on the chip, clipped on the new fan, and THREW THE REST OF THE TUBE AWAY.
So the moral is: if you're going to do a recall, do it on a disposable product.
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.
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Testing the wrong qualit (Score:3, Insightful)
I always wonder why they sell so much thermal/silver paste in one package if you're only going to use a little bit, and probably won't use much more until much later. Unless you're testing a lot of chips or heatsinks, who actually uses all of their thermal/silver paste?
Quit believing advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
"Contains 90% silver" is a simple and testable claim, and clearly not just ad-speak. There are laws against outright lies on the box of any product in most countries. This is a good thing.
Re:bah (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:well technically.... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is precisely what it means. It's not funny, it's just the language that advertisers are allowed to use. In fact, putting the phrase "97% pure micronized silver" on the package isn't making any claims at all about anything. If it were to say:
Contains 97% Pure Micronized Silver
it would likely mean
Contains (97% Pure) (Micronized Silver)
and not
(Contains 97%) (Pure Micronized Silver)
They're making a claim about the raw material they used to make their product, not their product.
Also, 100% doesn't mean 100% in advertising speak. Take a bag of potato chips that says "Contains 100% Russett Potatoes" on the bag. Obviously, this is not true. It also contains oil, salt, preservatives, and whatever else, and there is almost as much oil as there is potato. Likewise, they're only making a claim as to the origin of the potatoes, not the contents of the bag. 100% of the potatoes are of the variety "Russett," not 100% of the contents of this bag are potatoes.
99% of what advertisers tell you is probably just-barely-legal bullshit. This is something that I've come to simply accept over the years.
Re:bah (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Silver? Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares if it contains silver or not.
People care about it because if something claims to be 99% silver then it should damn well have some silver in it. Otherwise it is false advertising which is illegal.
The purpose of a heat sink is to .. radiate heat - not to look good on your wrist.
Which is exactly why you want it to contain silver, silver is one of the best conducters of heat there is. And you want it to conduct heat, not radiate it, the heatsink is to radiate the heat, the thermal transfer compound is just there to transfer the heat from the core to the heatsink.
Re:well technically.... (Score:3, Insightful)
So is that (Barely Legal) (Bull Shit), as in bullshit from an 18 year old porn actress?
Or (Barely Legal Bull) (Shit), as in the feces of an 18 year old bull?
Why would you want silver (Score:4, Insightful)
Copper is much cheaper.
Silver only conducts 10% better then copper.
Plus making sure you have a good contact by itself will do a lot just by itself.
False Labelling? Report it to FTC and state (Score:3, Insightful)
IF the ingredients list silver, and the ads say "silver", it MUST have silver in it, and as much as specified. This can be reported to the state's consumer affairs agency and/or the FTC for followup.
However, merely using the word "silver" in the name is not always fraud ...
Re:Why would you want silver (Score:4, Insightful)
It's damage control, spin, and passing the buck (Score:2, Insightful)
They knew.
They just didn't care.
Now that they are caught they are passing the buck.
Think about what they are offering: If you managed to save the receipt they will replace your current product.
And you get a T-shirt that is specifically designed to be a give-away.
And you get a coupon to buy more products.
If you are honestly accepting their word that they were poor abused victims in this whole scam, then you are gullible.
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:1, Insightful)
Same thing with silver thermal paste. You buy the paste for heat protection - silver is one of the very best conductors of heat. But your CPU got toasted? And there was no real protection? Then I think you have a good claim against these guys. Perhaps not 100% liability, but certainly something significant.
Let's ask Intel or AMD what they think about this fake thermal paste.
Other companies do the same (Score:4, Insightful)
I see this as being the issue with the Silver as well. Though it seems in some cases theyy couldn't find any, though maybe the microgram of 99.99% pure silver that they added to it was to minut to detect?
Re:Silver? Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you sure they claim to have 99% silver, or is it 99% silver compounds? For example, silver nitrate is commonly used to make mirrors. It is cheap. It is also liquid, which could be combined with a thickening agent to make thermal grease. So I highly doubt we're talking about pure solid silver here.
Re:bah (Score:2, Insightful)
But you are not telling the full story
to explain to the kiddies:
you know how physicists keep trying to meld particles together to show a unity of matter and energy, etc? getting particles that are more and more dense?
well way back then we had a unity of not only matter and energy, but space and time. It was beautiful. You could create little pockets of whatever combination you wanted. You guys do not even have the words to describe it these days.
then some of the younger squirts got jealous, and "spiked the punch".
And this place is the result of the hangover we all got.
quite simple really (Score:4, Insightful)
The half ounce of micronized silver they added to the 4000 gallon batch of silver colored grease was 99.9% pure.
Much in the same way that Made with real fruit juices doesn't gaurentee there's any reasonable ammount of fruit juices in it. Marketing at it's worst.
question (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:bah (Score:1, Insightful)
Best you can hope for is that the actor chosen is just a figurehead and the people behind him actually know what they are doing and are political zealots rather than just greedy.
Do you really want silver??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Testing procedure a bit questionable. (Score:2, Insightful)
You're not thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Take 100% pure silver, in a bar. What is its consistency?
Melt it. Now what is its consistency?
Grind it up into an ultra-fine powder. Now what is its consistency?
Now take the ground up silver and mix it with, say, baby oil, until it's 90% silver and 10% baby oil. Now what is its consistency?
And that's basically what the stuff is supposed to be, except that it's some kind of wax or oil that isn't made with babies.
-fred