Arctic Silver 5 is so thick!

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: klah
Toothpaste

http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm

Yep, that has been linked to many times and my own experience supports it. A 22g tube of Ceramique' would last most these cats for a loooong time=great value.

 

[Atlantean]

I put a bit on the processor then rub it in with a plastic bag then smoothe it out with a credit card.

 

[fanboi]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: jediknight
I did what they said as well.. perhaps I did something wrong, but I don't seem to be getting much of a temp decrease..

You didn't do anything wrong in all likelyhood The fact is all these reports of 5-10c+ temps drops by swapping T.I.M. are nonsense. I was told by some Gurus a ways back that the most I'd see is a couple C and all my testing and experience with various products has bore that out. People who get big temp drops and accredit it to their new T.I.M. had factors beyond the switch involved wether they realize it or not. Yeah I know some sites show significant changes in temp between products, but they often are getting paid to pimp, and some of them have testing methodology which is poor too.

The best reasons for using a quality T.I.M. are how well it resists "pumiping out" and drying up, How easy it is to work with, that it isn't messy or hard to clean up, cost per gram, lack of potential conductivity or capacitance, and does it have a long shelf life or begin to seperate? Does it void your warranty? at least IMO. I gave up on silver based products long ago because they failed badly in the mess and clean-up area as well as shelf life, and AS1&2 dried out on me too. I overclock so warranty is irrelevant for me.

I prefer Shin-Etsu products and some of their products are AMD approved so your warranty is protected. In fact the retail A64 coolers have G751 for the T.I.M. CoolerMaster Premium which is Shin-etsu based is good but hard to spread like most Shin-etsu products are, and the cost per application is high for both.

I have found the best overall for me is Ceramique' excluding lidded CPUs which I had the adhesive effect with. Some say you can use a twisting technique to break the lock but that wasn't the case for me. I could not lift the cooler far enough to get any kind of degree of rotation as it would have pulled the CPU out of socket because the mounting bracket for my A64 prevented rotation almost completely. Nor could I get anything under it and between the bracket and cooler to pry it off with without lifting too much. For lidded CPUs I'll stick to CoolerMaster Premium because once you get the technique down for applying it it's great stuff and cools well, plus it's cheaper per app than Shin-etsu.

This guys is partly wrong and partly right.

Let's say that, hypothetically, you had a 100% flat HS base and a 100% flat CPU heatspreader, then thermal paste would make no difference whatsoever. Thermal paste works by filling in the microscopic faults and crevises in HS bases and CPU's, since the thermal conductivity of the paste is superior to air, thereby lowering the temperature of the CPU.

If you have a high-quality HS with a very nice lap job (wipe that smirk off your face) done on the base, you'll see much less of a temperature drop than if you applied thermal paste to a crappy HS.

You'll notice a lot of the tests and reviews on the web are done using stock HS. There's a reason for this. Using top-quality HS's with mirror-polished bases wouldn't show much of a decrease in temperature due to thermal paste being used.

Bottom line: if you're getting a new HS, or a using a stock HS, upgrading to Arctic Silver or the like is advisable. If you already have good thermal paste on your HS, don't bother.

Here's a link to a review of AS5. Apparently, it IS better than Ceramique, but not by much.

http://www.modsynergy.com/Review%20109.htm