Ghetto substitue for Thermal adhesive?

[EvilDonnyboy]

Suggestions? Can't find real thermal epoxy or tape anywhere, except online. Can't get it online. glue stick glue? Suger glue? I'd be nice if the solution wasn't permanant.

 

[Howard]

You'd only need thermal adhesive if the adjacent surfaces needed to conduct heat.

You try Radio Shack?

 

[bad-ass]

I know radioshack has small tubes of thermal paste. They are about $6 I think.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

I already got thermal paste. I'm trying to cool the ICS chip on my P3V4X. The mobo is mounted in a tower, so the chip is verticle. This setup has foiled every ghetto trick in my book, even the usually fail safe scotch tape technique.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

ghetto bump

 

[medic]

Metal Thermal Tape- 2 bucks

Or the old way of applying a thin layer of compound, wipe clean two diagonal corners and apply a small drop of superglue to each and hold in place until dry.

It can be removed later quite easily if you don't put alot on.

 

[jamarno]

Silicone rubber sealant, AKA RTV. Few people realize that it conducts heat about as well as regular thermal paste (but not as well as high-performance pastes, like Arctic Silver) and roughly twice as well as thermal tape. It also sticks better than thermal tape, but unlike epoxy it's still fairly easy to cut to remove the heatsink if necessary.

Silicone grease is not a glue, and I once saw a heatsink stuck to a CPU with grease eventually slide off even though the CPU was almost perfectly horizontal.

 

[madthumbs]

I've heard that the thermal paste from radio shack is worse than going without. It's supposedly known to dry up. I've wondered if that zinc oxide (UV protection nose grease) would work. You only need enough to fill the micro gaps between the heatsink and cpu. Thermal paste is actually insulative... too much is bad.

 

[shiznut123]

I had the Radio Shack Thermal paste for a long time now. I had the tube for 1 year and it didn't dry.

 

[hans007]

what do you mean? you can use double stick tape. if you just dont have any thermal paste, thermal paste is zinc-oxide so you can use zinc-oxide based sunscreen (like in those old movies) if you really needed some

 

[madthumbs]

I would not use double side tape as a substitute for thermal paste. Tape would probably leave more micro gaps between the metals, and insulate between them. Thermal pads are designed to melt at a certain temperature to fill in any gaps. If you want to bond a heat sink to something you should probably look for thermal cement.

 

[dawheat]

carefully put some thermal paste on the ICS chip-leaving the corners of the chip perfectly clean. A small drop of superglue on each corner- put it together and let it dry.

This is pretty permanant though. Removing it is going to be nearly impossible.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

Ppl, the ICS chip is smaller than a standard SDRAM chip (but looks similar). There's no room for 2 drops of super glue. A single drop would take 1/3 the space of the surface. And what if the super glue ran off and got on the metal traces? It'd be pretty damn hard to get off without damaging it.

I personally havan't tried very hard to find thermal tape in stores, but my friend says he's trid everything to get his hands on tape (not including online) with no avai. I kno for a fact, Radio Shack in canada don't carry thermal tape. It's listed on their website tho, so i'd guess some US RS stores have 'em.

 

[codehack2]

Try poop.

CH2

 

[Bartman39]

My solution for the clock gen on my P3V4X was to use a clothes pin slightly modded to hold the heatsink on... (I had whittled the jaws of the wooden clothes pin to fit the top of the HS) I had applied thermal compound and just held the heatsink by the ends and with the other hand slipped the clothes pin on sandwiching the heatsink between the chip and board... (wood does not conduct very well...) This was before I had read about the super glue on the corners trick or even thermal epoxy...

 

[larrymoencurly]

I once bought an i740 video card whose heatsink was attached with thermal tape, and after I scraped it off and replaced it with silicone seal, the heatsink ran 3 deg hotter, indicating better heat flow.

 

[resinboy]

I used regular 2 part epoxy w/ no problems on that board.

 

[johncar]

Arctic Silver thermal epoxy...dealer list at arcticsilver.com
John C.

 

[azeker1]

Has anyone ever tried the Thermal Liquid that Radio Shack sells? It comes in a pen applicator and is much less viscous than the grease. Does anyone know if it works well?

 

[PCResources]

First you see to it that both surfaces are as flat as they can be, then you just use some hygiene silicone... it will work...

I used it to place a HSF on a RAID controller, the HSF is very hot, so obviously it works...

I would say that it would work as well as any silicon thermal solution...

Patrick Palm

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