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?"
bah (Score:5, Funny)
In my day we had to make thermal paste by grinding it down with stones.
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
Oh yeah? Well a TRUE Alchemist... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
Requires alchemy(2) and goldsmithing(10), fire crystal + silver ingot + beeswax = thermal paste
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
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!
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
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
In my day all we had was this damn turtle.
double bah (Score:5, Funny)
You had a turtle? We plunged forever into the nothingness of pure void. Uphill. Both ways.
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
Re:bah (Score:5, Funny)
Forget silver paste.
Try the paste made from mithril mined by the local dwarves.
Re:bah (Score:4, Insightful)
No (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
i call this the "grape nuts theory".
no grapes. no nuts. grape nuts.
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.
Maybe"silver" is just the color ... (Score:4, Funny)
You know, uh, like, uh "orange" paint isn't really made from oranges, it's just that color
Yeah! that's it!
(And if you believe that
--
Tomas
Re:Maybe"silver" is just the color ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
You think a speculum exam is bad? Try working in A&E (ER to you yanks) at 4 in the morning when some chick comes in because she's lost a condom on the job and you have to dig it out from her semen-filled snatch. Eeewww.
So.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So.... (Score:3, Funny)
Dirty Harry?
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.
Re:So.... (Score:5, Informative)
In the UK we also have the Small Claims Court, but the case here might be against teh small corner shop who sold you the stuff, and they might defend the case....
No system of legislation is perfect, but it seems to me that fraudulent claims like this should automatically be actioned by the authorities everywhere, with no need for private individuals to have to pay for lawyers.
In any case, if you have been ripped off, first politely request a refund and compensation, and if they refuse, report them to whatever official body deals with such things locally. They will soon get the message.
BTW I have no sympathy whatsoever for any overclocker who has had a meltdown. Overclocking is a very unsound practice, for a number of reasons, which I have aired on /. before and will not bother repeating. It DEFINITELY shortens the life of your equipment, that is provable fact. But, I don't condone fraud, and no silver look-alike is likely to have adequate thermal conductivity.
BTW, copper is almost as good as silver, you would never be able to detect the difference in practice, in fact it might be better because it could be used in higher concentration, and being slightly softer in pure form, the individual particles might deform better to give more contact area. Other metals such as gold or platinum are absolutely useless, despite any spurious claims that may be made. Any testbook on material properties, with tables of thermal conductivity, will show why.
Re:So.... (Score:3, Funny)
Dunno, they never come back.
Silver? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Silver global supplies are running low... (Score:5, Interesting)
Silver is cheap. Beyond cheap. Its everywhere.
I know this because I make and sell silver jewelry. Scrap silver is essentially worthless.
I have about 30lbs of 92.5 sitting here in a bucket that I will eventually melt down. And about 10 pounds of fine silver (99.9). Its simply not worth even trying to do anything with at this point.
And that silver boom that is supposedly coming...
I'll believe it when I see it.
Do you know how much silver US customs has in its possession? Tons
The reason for this is, if something is imported into the United States, and it is stamped as 95.5, and customs tests any particular piece in that shipment, (regardless of whether it is a small bag, or a container full) and it comes out to something LESS than 92.5% pure, they melt the WHOLE shipment down. Do what you want with it.
And trust me, they *do* test.
Which, come to think of it, could be a way to stop this type of thing, but I thing that "melting it down" only applies to items that are stamped. And silver paste obviously is not stamped. But there is a possibility it is still controlled as precious or semi-precious metals. I'll ask my customs broker next time I talk to her.
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.
Silver? Toothpaste? Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Have you checked out Dan's Data on thermal greases [dansdata.com]? He does a very nice comparison between Artic Silver 3, Cooler Master PTK-001 and HTK-001, Nanotherm "Ice" and "Blue", and... Toothpaste and Vegimite. While Dan may be quite mad [dansdata.com], even for an Aussie [crocodilehunter.com], there is definitely method to his madness. After measuring the effects on cooling with his usual methods... the difference amounts to diddly-squat [dansdata.com]. And yes, that includes the difference between Artic Silver 3 and Toothpaste. (Actually, toothpaste was marginally superior.)
So, yeah, there may not be much point to getting too upset if you've gotten thus screwed-- it probably won't make jack-all difference in your system.
On the other hand, it is definitely immoral and almost certainly illegal to claiming "99.9% silver content" when you mean "99.9% silver free". While it was probably a harmless scam (and probably saved this disreputable company some chump change in manufacturing their overpriced goop), whatever Three-Letter-Agency [ftc.gov] has jurisdiction should probably come down on these folk like a ton of old hard drives on the principle of the matter.
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.
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:Nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice... (Score:5, Funny)
It's a Nigerian exporter who promised OCZ they had MILLIONS OF DOLLARS of unclaimed silver they need help get out of the country...
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).
Re:Nice... (Score:4, Informative)
Did you try calling?
Customer Service Phone Number: Toll Free: (800) 390-1119
That number is located in their help section under Contact
And what you say doesn't make much sense. If you wanted to return the camera, they have an automated system which gives you a RMA# automatically if your claim is within the return period (which they fudge in the buyers favor btw). They don't offer full support since they're just a reseller.
I placed 320 orders from them since 2002 (you can check your entire order history!), and probably RMA'd about 50 items (out of over a thousand) without even a single problem. They're not perfect, but that's pretty close.
Re:Nice... (Score:5, Funny)
Nice work.
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.
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?
Re:invoice? (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:3, Funny)
Translation: 0% silver by volume.
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!
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (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:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Informative)
Quite frankly, sir, you are ill-informed, since these thermal pastes do far more than your standard stuff you get from AMD or Intel (I'm not sure if Intel provides a thermal pad, I'm sure they do, but I've never bought an Intel processor), or buy on the internet that doesn't contain silver.
Here are some links for you to check out to see just how much of a difference these tubes make:
Mikhailtech review [mikhailtech.com], EXHardware review/comparison of pastes [exhardware.com], Overclockers Club review/comparison [overclockersclub.com], ClubOC review/comparison [cluboverclocker.com].
There are many more reviews and comparisons. I chose to do a Google search for 'review "arctic silver 3"' and those were pretty much the first hits I got. In an overclocked system where stability and cooling is important, these pastes could make all the difference. In a standard system, these help prolong the life of the computer's parts.
Oh, and before I forget, the links I just posted more or less compare Arctic Silver stuff with either other Arctic Silver products, or competing products. If you want to see just how much of a difference these compounds can make from the regular thermal pads or thermal compound that uses silicone, Check this out [earthv.com]. That's a whopping 10 degrees celsius difference the Arctic Silver has on full load compared to a standard thermal pad, and 5 degrees difference from standard thermal compound w/silicone.
I personally use AS3, and so does my father. With this paste I can safely overclock my Athlon 2000+ to an Athlon 2600+. Not that I do, mind you, because even though I can, I'd rather know that my system is well cooled, rather than adequately.
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want the real stuff you need to look at what the United States military uses. if you want the absolute best thermal compound available, get anything that meets MIL SPEC MIL-C-47113.
I found the only product so far available to the consumer in small quantities is GC electronics Type 44 Heat sink compound. the little 1/2 oz jar will last you, your friends, and your families lifetime.
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.
Let me flesh out something you said (Score:4, Informative)
Good advice. This may be stating the obvious, but the perfect thermal junction between a chip and a heatsink is NOTHING, i.e. both of them perfectly flat, with every single atom touching. In the real world, surfaces have flaws and air gets in between. Air is a very poor conductor of heat. So we have thermal compound, which is beter than air, and more malleable than the two surfaces could be.
Don't use much of the stuff AT ALL. When you squeeze the two surfaces together, you just want a thin film of compound fillling in the areas where the two surfaces don't touch. If it squishes out the sides, you used too much.
Re:OCZ has announced a recall. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
I can see the imprint: (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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.
Who cares? (Score:4, Funny)
no - he got it wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
thank you, thank you. i'll be here all night. tip your wait staff.
class action lawsuit... (Score:3, Informative)
These people have to have violated more than a few false advertising laws, and since the article says on the bottom that all tests have been verified with an independent testing agency, I say this is a fairly open and shut case.
Ok (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ok (Score:5, Funny)
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)
Re:I want to speak to the manager! (Score:5, Funny)
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)
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.
ARTICLE TEXT (Score:3, Informative)
Silversinksam - 1/21/04
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.
All Testing was done twice, once on a jeweler's acid free 'Black stone', and the test was repeated on paper. The testing solution was Nitric acid and Muriatic acid that was pre-mixed professionally.
The tests produced some very disturbing results:
OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver compound and the CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease has ZERO silver in it.
The testing solution stayed orange - if it had any silver in it, the acids would turn varying degrees of red, depending on the purity of the silver present. OCZ claims that OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver compound is, "Made with 99.9% pure micronized silver, Over 70% silver content by weight".
I cannot concur and my tests conclusively show that there is Zero micronized silver present, and Zero silver content by weight.
Arctic Silver 3 and Arctic Silver 5 were also tested and both produced a blood red color, indicating 90% - 100% purity of Silver in both Arctic Silver 3 and Arctic Silver 5. Arctic Silver's claim of, "Contains 99.9% pure silver" by my testing is accurate and of the compounds tested, only Arctic Silver products produced results showing that Silver is in fact present.
The tubes in the picture below from left to right, Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3, OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound and CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease.
In picture 3 below, from left to right is Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3 and OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound. The compounds were placed on the paper and the acid was place on the compound undisturbed. Notice how the acid drop placed on the OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound remains orange, indicating zero silver present:
When you go into a jewelry store and buy a sterling silver or a fine silver necklace, you expect the jewelry to be made of sterling or fine silver. The same should apply to silver thermal pastes - if the silver paste has no silver in it and the manufacturer says it does, that is misleading.
Based on my testing, I can not recommend OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound or CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease, as they are both misleading products with zero silver in them. If you want a product that actually has silver as an ingredient, Arctic Silver 3, Arctic Silver 5 or Arctic Silver Adhesive tested OK.
Ed Note: Silversinksam's conclusions have been verified by an independent testing laboratory - details will follow in Part 2 of this article.
Silversinksam
Re:ARTICLE TEXT (Score:5, Funny)
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:Overclocking not for the serious geek (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Overclocking not for the serious geek (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, yeah, sure. When you put it in that light it all makes perfect sense.
KFG
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.
Use Vegemite!!! (Score:3, Funny)
your all missing the point (Score:3, Interesting)
OCZ recall (Score:3, Informative)
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!
page mirror (Score:3, Informative)
While (Score:4, Funny)
came in wanting help getting his heatsink off.
Sure enough that baby was stuck tighter than a frogs ass. I asked "did you install this?" "yep! I
put it on with JB-WELD for a nice snug fit."
Thermal paste is a ripoff!! (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, c'mon people! Use some logic!
For best results, put heatsinks on the fans to cool the air more. You might want to point a fan at the fan, too. Actually, if you did this enough times, you could reach absolute zero or even absolute -10.
This isn't rocket smarts, guys.
Testing the wrong qualit (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, IANAMS (I am not a materials scientist), but the liquid test agents they're using may not work if the silver is in certain molecular compounds. The best way to examine these thermal pastes would be with a scanning electron microscope. I had the priledge of using one at NIST (National Institute for Standards in Technology located in Maryland), and we examined a ring and used some sort of technique to determine that the band of the ring had 75% atomic numbers of 79 and 25% atomic numbers of 29 and the jewel of the ring had 100% atomic number of 6. (We saw all of these as relative heights in a graph of some sort of spectrum). Needless to say, the ring was 18 carat Gold (24 carat = 100%) and the diamond was real. This immensely relieved the husband, whose wife's ring had been the one examined.
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.
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.
Re:Why would you want silver (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, my werewolf hunting days were over.. (Score:4, Funny)
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?
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.
Re:Cost of Silver? Copper an alternative? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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."
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.
Re:Cost of Silver? Copper an alternative? (Score:3, Informative)
Check out some of the heatsink companies websites, thermaltake etc, to get some graphs and such about the heating properties of their products.
Toms [tomshardware.com] does regular heatsink comparisons, and the copper always beats out the alu of the same type.
Re:silver crayons (Score:3, Informative)
silver candy decorations have real silver (Score:5, Informative)
Re:silver crayons (Score:4, Informative)
From CompUSA's product info [compusa.com]:
97% pure micronized silver
75-80% silver content by weight
I sure as hell don't remember any of my crayons saying "micronized silver." Which is probably just as well, considering how much we used to chew on them.
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Funny)