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Arctic Silver 3 vs Arctic Alumina

Arctic Silver 3 has silver particles in them for extra heat conductivity, Arctic Alumina is ceramic based. Most people reccommend Arctic Silver 2 or 3 for overclocking. Not being an overclocker myself, I cant say. But what I can say is that it did cool off my non-overclocked system
 
I believe that Alumina is actually more of a paste substance. You would use it in place of thermal paste. Arctic Silver 3 (you'd be foolish to buy 2) only helps with heat conductivity, and needs another device to keep the HSF attached to the processor.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Originally posted by: orcorcorc5
so with the arctic silver 3, I'll need ANOTHER type of glue to connect the heatsink to the processor?
Click to expand...

You shouldn't have to connect the HSF unit and CPU at all with glue. That's what heatsinks have clips or screws for😉
 
I think this should be clarified, as there seems to be some confusion here. Arctic Silver and Arctic Alumina are both grease. Arctic Silver uses, surprise, silver as the conductive material while Arctic Alumina uses ceramics.

FYI, Arctic Silver also manufactures two part adhesives for attaching chipset, GPU and RAM heatsinks. The adhesives are available in both Silver and Alumina versions. The adhesives are not recommended for use on CPUs.
 
Arctic Silver 3 (not the adhesive) for OC. Only 5 bucks shipped at SVC. It's worthwhile. It can make a several degree Celcius difference compared with alumina, from what I've read.
 
Arctic Silver 3 (not the adhesive) for OC. Only 5 bucks shipped at SVC. It's worthwhile. It can make a several degree Celcius difference compared with alumina, from what I've read. >>


PROOF ?!?!
 
ask any OCer. ASII made a few degrees difference when I was ocing back in the day...I used compunurse to check my temps.
 
ask any OCer. ASII made a few degrees difference when I was ocing back in the day...I used compunurse to check my temps. >>

Is that degrees C??

I thought that using AS 2-3 compared to regular paste only did 3-6 C difference

Am i mistaken (if so proof) or are your results wrong?
 
Originally posted by: Newbie123
ask any OCer. ASII made a few degrees difference when I was ocing back in the day...I used compunurse to check my temps. >>

Is that degrees C??

I thought that using AS 2-3 compared to regular paste only did 3-6 C difference

Am i mistaken (if so proof) or are your results wrong?
Click to expand...



Isn't 3 to 6C a few degrees?

What are you asking?
 
I think 1 degree C translates in 2 degrees F

it not might be much but when it comes to cooling your CPU it counts.

Im jsut asking for the proof, since i thought different
 
I know the ORIGINAL Artic Silver made a couple degree difference compared to regular thermal grease. Heck one degree is one degree when it comes to OC.
 
I've never used arctic silver III, but I have used arctic alumina w/out any overclocking. I really like arctic alumina because it is very easy to remove from processor and heatsink.
 
Jebsus guys... let's use our heads here. There's some clarification that needs to occur here.

orcorcorc5... What are you going to use the AS3 for? In between the CPU and heatsink? Or the GPU and a cooler?

If its for the CPU, AS3 is probably the best solution you can buy on the market. There have been tons of reviews and it outperformed all other products. Here are directrons on how to apply it. Heatsinks use either clips or bolts to attach themselves to the motherboard. No glue is necessary.

GPUs are hooked onto video cards by two methods generally. The first method (ala nVIDIA cards) is via a couple of plastic clips. So it's pretty easy to undo the clips, use some isopropyl alcohol to clean things off, and reapply AS3. You might reduce temps by a degree or two. Do not, get any AS3 on any part of the card other than the GPU. It is conductive and can short your card out.

The other method of attaching GPU heatsinks on is via thermal adhesive since there aren't any hole for plastic clips (no you can't drill holes in the board). Basically it's glue that's designed to also conduct heat (normal glue doesn't do it too well). In this case, Alumina is your best solution. They make thermal epoxy (glue). It comes in two parts which you mix together... when mixed they create a strong bond that also conducts heat quite well. The nice thing about Alumina is that if you do get it on your card, it's not a big deal because it doesn't conduct electricity... nor is it capacitative (holds a charge). Here are directrons on how to apply it.

Newbie123 this should satisfy your need for proof. Next time get off your butt and find the information to disprove someone's statements rather than asking for proof.
Here and here and here and here andhere and here and here and here and there is plenty more.
 
Taken for the links that worked

<<AMD OEM HSF with white goop Idle = 122F - 50C (After 20 minutes)
AMD OEM HSF with white goop Under Load = 132F - 56C

Pretty high temps here with the AMD OEM HSF and your standard white goop. Lets see if some Arctic Silver 3 can help cool things down...

AMD OEM HSF with AS3 Idle = 116F - 47C (After 20 minutes)
AMD OEM HSF with AS3 Under Load = 127F - 53C.

We see a drop of 6F - 3C at idle speeds. When we crank up the RC5 client for some processor-intensive work, we see a 5F - 3C drop from using the Arctic Silver 3.>>

See, Only 3-6 degrees C compared to AS3 and regular paste.

 
too bad that measurement is taken with a socket-thermistor, which is neither accurate nor uncompressed as far as its readings go.

3-6C socket-thermistor = 3-24C internal die temps[/b]. And yes, socket-thermistors can exhibit compression anywhere from 2X to 6X in extreme cases.



Mike
 
Originally posted by: Newbie123
ask any OCer. ASII made a few degrees difference when I was ocing back in the day...I used compunurse to check my temps. >>

Is that degrees C??

I thought that using AS 2-3 compared to regular paste only did 3-6 C difference

Am i mistaken (if so proof) or are your results wrong?
Click to expand...


Wait, wait, wait. You're asking him for proof that it lowers temps by a few (textbook defenition 3) degrees, saying that it only lowered your temps by 3-6? Not only that, but you keep on harping on it?

3 is from 3 to 6!
 
Originally posted by: orcorcorc5
What's the difference and which one should I use if I'm gonna do some serious OCing?
Click to expand...

To answer your original question: Arctic Silver 3 provides better thermal transfer properties than any of the other Arctic products. There was a review somewhere that pitted Arctic Silver 1,2, and 3, and also Arctic Alumina against each other. I think it was in this order:
Arctic Silver 1
Arctic Alumina
Arctic Silver 2
Arctic Silver 3

Alumina's main advantage is that it is purely an insulator - no conductivity nor capacitance. But if you are going to be overclocking, then Arctic Silver 3 is what you want.

In reference to the mentions of grease vs glue, all the Arctic things up there are grease - nonadhesive. There are separate products like Arctic Silver Alumina Adhesive - that's designed for attaching coolers to things like videocards and motherboard chipsets, or RAM chips. It's NOT for processors.
 
The viscosity of Arctic Silver 1 has been observed to have a problem with small core/high heat processors. A member of the forums (jonnyGURU) noted it to exhibit an effect called pump out. Where the heating and cooling of the core (expansion and contraction) acted like a pump and pushed the compound out.

ASII solved this problem and I am sure all the others since have. From my testing Arctic Alumina performs nearly identically with ASII, while AS3 is the clear leader.

.............edit..............
And yes ASII, Arctic Alumina and AS3 are all clearly better than the pad that comes with the retail heatsink from Intel. (BTW it has 2 additional thermal interfaces). Thermal compound has the core -> compound -> heatsink interfaces, but the retail pad has core -> black TIM -> tin foil -> black TIM -> heatsink.

* -> = interface
 
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