Is Your Silver-based Thermal Paste Really Silver?

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

[nuclear305]

Who cares who's selling what? The TRUE geek makes his own from a brick of silver.

In my day we had to make thermal paste by grinding it down with stones.

No

[forkazoo]

No, mine isn't. And by the way, despite the claims of the manufacturer, Soylent green is not 100% people. Quit believing advertising, and you will be just fine. Better yet, take up spectroscopy as a hobby. Chicks dig spectroscopes!

Silver?

[Breakfast Pants]

This is not surprizing at all as silver is expensive. Oh wait; what the fuck?

Who cares?

[FractusMan]

When someone buys 'Silver' thermal paste, are they paying for silver, or for performance? I don't buy the platinum edition of a game and feel jipped because the CD held little to no platinum.

no - he got it wrong...

[MrBallistic]

...compusa meant that it was 99% silver - the /color/.

thank you, thank you. i'll be here all night. tip your wait staff.

Ok

[TexVex]

Silver thermal paste

Not so silver after all
My CPU wilts

Because I couldn't come up with a good Perl Haiku. :(

o boy

[lib112x]

Is silver toxic? I thought the tube that came with my athlon fan was complementary tootpaste!

Re:So....

[WIAKywbfatw]

Who do all these people who are concerned about false labelling go to for enforcement?

Dirty Harry?

Re:bah

[bunseki suru]

You had stones? Bah! In my day, we didn't even have friction! We had to will the silver particles apart - and we liked it. Young whippersnappers...

Ah, the joys of advertising...

[digitalamish]

It is silver. Don't forget, silver is a not only an element on the periodic table, but a color. Just like some of the 'copper' heatsinks are nothing more than gold colored cheaper metals. If it were real silver, and cost $.99 a tube, I'd make a killing on the commodities market. I'd bet a pile of 'gold' that's the excuse.

What's next, KFC saying their chicken is good for you? Oh wait...
--
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the 80's)

I want to speak to the manager!

[teamhasnoi]

This 'hamburger' contains no ham, these 'French' fries are from Idaho, and this Dr. Pepper was not prescribed and tastes nothing like pepper!

I want a free goddam coffee and an apple pie right now or I'll sue!

silver crayons

[A Bugg]

Yeah and remind me to sue crayola too for not including any real silver in their silver crayons, those damned cheapskates.
A Bugg

Overclocked...

[Justin205]

403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected

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?

Oh yeah? Well a TRUE Alchemist...

[Anonymous Coward]

makes *his* from a brick of Tin. So suck it punk!

Re:bah

[DrMrLordX]

That sounds less like an activity to be pursued by a geek and more like a crafting recipe from FFXI.

Requires alchemy(2) and goldsmithing(10), fire crystal + silver ingot + beeswax = thermal paste

Re:OCZ has announced a recall.

[mrjah]

less than 1% silver by volume

Translation: 0% silver by volume.

Re:RTFA

[jburst]

several thermal compounds that claim to have 99% pure silver content

They are advertised as CONTAINING silver, it's not just silver color.

That means they have content which is colored silver. You don't speak marketing, do you?

Re:I want to speak to the manager!

[The_dev0]

You're about to break my heart about baby oil too, aren't you?

shock and awe!

[mcmonkey]

What? there's no gold in gold bond powder [goldbond.com]?

Re:OCZ has announced a recall.

[SYFer]

Perfect response. Give the Product Manager a raise.

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 /.)--may actually have the effect of increasing brand loyalty.

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:So....

[NanoGator]

"Who do all these people who are concerned about false labelling go to for enforcement? "

Dunno, they never come back.

Use Vegemite!!!

[BigFootApe]

Dan says it works real good [dansdata.com].

Re:Ok

[addaon]

That's okay, you couldn't come up with a good heatsink haiku either.

Re:bah

[Brandybuck]

Silver bricks? You was lucky! In my day we had mine our own ore and smelt it down. Then our dad would assay it, and if it wasn't 99% pure, all we got for breakfast was CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease!

Re:I want to speak to the manager!

[Tumbleweed]

And you don't wanna know about the Girl Scout Cookies, either.

Re:Overclocked...

[prockcore]

You're telling me a site on overclocking has to cut off the user limit? Their servers aren't overclocked enough to handle it?

If only the thermal paste they used had real silver in it, they would be able handle the traffic.

Damn, no silver

[phorm]

How else are we supposed to protect our PC's from werewolves?!

Re:bah

[John_Booty]

Silver bricks? You was lucky! In my day we had mine our own ore and smelt it down. Then our dad would assay it, and if it wasn't 99% pure, all we got for breakfast was CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease!

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:Use Vegemite!!!

[phrasebook]

I'm always surprised at how bad Vegemite looks in photos, like here [dansdata.com]. It looks much nicer (more edible) when you're holding the jar.

While

[Kurt Russell]

working in a local mom in pop type store some dude
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."

Re:Overclocking not for the serious geek

[kfg]

It is just like Bob putting a big block in his pinto.

Oh, yeah, sure. When you put it in that light it all makes perfect sense.

KFG

I think so

[jjeffries]

it tastes like it's real silver to me

Re:ARTICLE TEXT

[mattkime]

I think at some point we need to start modding article text postings as off-topic. Nothing destroys a good slashdot conversation like a return to the main article. ...it also undermines the slashdotting attempt.

Thermal paste is a ripoff!!

[teamhasnoi]

Nothing works better than ground up heatsinks under your heatsink!

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.

Re:bah

[madpierre]

You had loose clouds of interstellar gas. *LUXURY*

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

[eric76]

Forget silver paste.

Try the paste made from mithril mined by the local dwarves.

Re:OCZ has announced a recall.

[axonal]

But how do I squeeze it back into the tube?

Re:No

[Frymaster]

Soylent green is not 100% people. Quit believing advertising

i call this the "grape nuts theory".

no grapes. no nuts. grape nuts.

Reading in-between the lines of a OCZ recall.

[Anonymous Coward]

OCZ would like to take this time to spin doctor a recent article published at Overclockers.com, which shows that OCZ Ultra 2 thermal compound has no silver content.

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.

Re:bah

[DarthApoc]

And if you tell the young people today, they won't believe you!

I can see the imprint:

[Lionfish]

I fried my cpu and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Re:bah

[Hexydes]

You had a vacuum? All I got was a broom and a dust pan. *weeping*

Maybe"silver" is just the color ...

[SmoothTom]

... not a metallic element they are refering to? It looks "silver."

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:bah

[gnovos]

You had a quantum foam vacuum of pure nothingness to pop universes out of? I WISH I had a vacuum of pure nothingness to pop universes out of.

In my day all we had was this damn turtle.

Re:bah

[Bigman]

..and you would ha' gotten away with it, if it wasn't for them pesky kids!

Re:bah

[PsiPsiStar]

>It is natural but wrong to think of that
>singular moment as being in a vacuum.

It is both unnatural and wrong to think of that moment at all. Go play baseball or kiss someone.
Or watch TV for a few hours. That'll even you out a bit.

Re:No

[balloonhead]

There was no need to bring the conversation to this. No need.

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.

Re:Maybe"silver" is just the color ...

[Scorchio]

Hmm.. I guess that means I'm not going to make my fortune by melting down boxes of Golden Grahams.

McDonald's fault for running their friers so hot

[blorg]

They should run them at a safe, drinkable temperature.

Re:New Egg makes the baby Jesus cry.

[Mr Guy]

Indeed, all of the orders I've placed had their tracking information on the website itself updated every couple hours.

In my experience though, they tend to move fast enough that it seems to be like this:

Your order is at Step 1: Validating Order

*RELOAD*

Your order is at Step 2: Verifying payment information

*RELOAD*

Your order is at Step 2: Verifying payment information

*RELOAD*

Your order is at Step 6: The FedEx guy is about to ring your*DING DONG*

double bah

[Blue23]

In my day all we had was this damn turtle.

You had a turtle? We plunged forever into the nothingness of pure void. Uphill. Both ways.

That's not all...

[Junior J. Junior III]

My Titanium and Platinum edition software isn't really made out of Titanium or Platinum, either. What a gyp. I thought the CDs would be made out of superior metals, and here they're just the same old standard foil you get with any other commercially pressed CD. Bleaugh.

Well, my werewolf hunting days were over..

[Channard]

Well, several hospilizations later, at least I know why my super soaker filled with 'silver' thermal paste was having no effect upon the local lycanthropes. Damn you, false advertisers.

Re:No

[Oopsz]

Well, that was the last time I eat while reading slashdot...

Re:Nice...

[lobsterGun]

it warms my heart to see that you used the proper "You're a moron" rather than the ever more common "Your a moron" or the coloquial "U R a m0r0n".

Nice work.

Re:bah

[Pyro226]

You had a broom and a dust pan? All I had was a toothbrush, and I had to brush my teeth with it as well.

Re:No

[CreatureComfort]

More to the interest of the typical /. reader...

Girl Scout cookies aren't made from real girl scouts either.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell if that job sucks, or kicks ass.

Re:No

[trentblase]

You call it A&E? So when you are about to die, they have to say "get this man to the A and E, stat!". That's a whole extra syllable! That's the difference between life and DEATH!

Re:Nice...

[PSaltyDS]

"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."

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:invoice?

[Casca]

Oh come on, how hard is it to create an invoice? I wouldn't feel bad at all about faking an invoice to return a product that was sold to me under false pretenses.

Re: double bah

[Anonymous Coward]

You had a direction to plunge. In my time the universe was totally homogenous. We did not know which way was down to plunge to and we liked it!!

Re:No

[TheLink]

Well it's probably pronounced "Aieeee!".

Re:Nice...

[TheLink]

Ah but you get to outsource some blame too. OCZ gets to say someone else did it.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Try a smaller size next. No matter what she tells you, you're not 'large'.