Thermal Compound Roundup = Mayonnaise

Just stay away from this Rosewill product. Need a comprehensive test of different Mayo brands and other color Lipsticks.



Wife: " Have you seen my Lipstick?"
Me: " Sorry honey I had to redo my heatsink again."

Jim

Didn't know this thread existed but being a bit of a fiddler - have done some testing with filters for cases and have some - I hope people would find helpful in making them. So message me if you would like to know my thoughts on cheap and efficient home made filters.

Bck to topic - I am going to try out some material that we use in health that is used for the early treatment of burns (everyone should have this in their fridge by the way). It is a product known as Silver sulphadiazine

Silver sulfadiazine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and it has the immediate effects of cooling the burn (one should ALWAYS run the wound site under cool running water for at least 20 mins first) and the elemental silver acts as a anti microbial. End of lecture

Now as this product contains the amount of silver that it does - typically 10% - it occurred to me that it might make a good and effective thermal paste - why? because of the fairly high content of the highly conductive silver plus it has a use by date for health reg purposes. Now we throw this stuff out as a normal practice and I got to thinking what a waste as the silver contained in it would still be silver the only reason that I know of is that the other constituents (chlorhexidine for example) degrades with time and becomes inactive. In addition to this the cream is VERY expensive even through the health system again to me an absolute waste of Ben Hur proportions
Now the cream itself is rather on the quite sloppy side and I have been preparing some for use by leaving some in a shallow dish and covering that with a fine mesh material pieces of womens panty hose or Organza but any fine material that keeps out dust would be also fine. In fact doing this inside a refridgerator has the added advantage of dehydration and less dust / particulate intrusion.
The theory is and turns out to happen to be that the silver sulphadiazine evaporates off the most part of the H2O content leaving one with a thick paste to be applied as usual - I don't know about anyone else but I use an old credit card to spread the paste onto the contacting surfaces - on both sides eg CPU and heatsink and applying a tiny spot in the centre of CPU so when the pressure is applied the paste is able to spread out evenly knowing that the whole surface in any case is already coated. Many I will guess have their own particular way of doing this but I find it most efficient from a coverage and cost point of view.
I am just about ready to test out this material as it takes some time to get rid of the H2O my only concern is that given the conductive properties of silver that some will "creep" out and onto the board hence my system of spreading any material with a credit card.
I will keep anyone who's interested up to date with my findings as mad as all this might sound

ICit2lol said:

I will keep anyone who's interested up to date with my findings as mad as all this might sound

Mad is good. Keep us posted :)

At last someone likes me

Will do mickey all I have to find now is a reliable, foolproof(specifically for me lol), and reasonably precise method of measuring the temps of the devices that I use it on.

For example I use the Scythe front panel fan controller unit the Cpuid and Speccy apps now what the Scythe and Cpuid + Speccy app tell me the temps are on my main machine are really quite different ie Scythe - CPU 40c and the Cpuid app anything from 35-37cc, and Speccy just the average of 37c (again because these apps monitor the multi cored i5 2500 CPU).

Admittedly the Scythe uses thermal sensors (some form of thermal sensing diode I suspect) that rely on direct contact on the outside of the device and the Cpuid and Speccy are getting the info from the system readouts.

I like to be quite precise and I would like anyone who knows of a reasonably accurate sensing device or app to let me know where I can get them or it. Now of course I do not want to spend squillions on a device but to me that such a device or app would mean any results could be relied upon as accurate within say a 1-5% tolerance of the exact temperature.

On the other hand I could use just one of those apps on a dedicated basis that it use only that one and go by the differences in the temp deviation points.

As a footnote I have tried the material I described earlier on an old Compaq mchine witha 1.6Ghz Pentium 4 CPU.
I must first state that I did this test by touch alone as I cannot get past BIOS on this old thing.
Now the device at running the BIOS screen was in run 1 - with the original thermal compound deployed the lower end (closest to the CPU) felt to hot to hold ones finger on (in fact I think that not removing it would have ended in burning myself) and the air being pulled through the CPU fan was noticeably warm - similar to very warm bath water, and run 2 with my concoction the CPU one could hold your finger on for years and not get the least uncomfortable and the exhaust air was noticeably hotter than run 1.

I know this is a rough and crude method of doing a test but until I can find a suitable method of collecting and collating data then I have to presume that my concoction (lets just call it ICtal for quickness sake but apt) indicates that it is more efficient than the original material.

Again trying to be a little more objective re this I have to say that the original thermal compound must have been quite old (although not hardened) and maybe have lost some of it's properties. However I do have at my disposal various brands and types of thermal compound that I could use if again I had an accurate method of measuring the temperature.

When I do find such a method then it will show whether my observations re ICtal are indeed what I suspect they are.

End lecture 2 (Stand by for lecture 3)

ICit2lol said:

I like to be quite precise and I would like anyone who knows of a reasonably accurate sensing device or app to let me know where I can get them or it. Now of course I do not want to spend squillions on a device but to me that such a device or app would mean any results could be relied upon as accurate within say a 1-5% tolerance of the exact temperature.

Something along the lines like this ?

Probably heading into the squillions area though - if you can find one.

Yeah Mike I do get where you are coming from I didn't give that aspect a thought to be honest - hypersensitivity to sulpha materials or any of the other constituents. That is a very good and valid point and I admit I should have been onto that from the word go. I will message - OT my comments.

Now this has put a whole different complexion on my rantings (prone to getting carried away). The cloth issue I had not given that thought actually I was more concerned with cream which you rightly say has gone out of "fashion" in burns treatments. The cloth you speak of I only am aware of the application of such dressings OVER the applied healing dressing to limit or eliminate malodorous situations. But again am getting OT - sorry to the mods.

My thoughts were based on the whole for purely seeing the waste of it all, and in a system that is becoming I think you will agree almost unsustainable. Plus I thought using mayonnaise and vegetable spreads derived from say canola seed could be detrimental to the metallic surfaces and in the form of a canola based product a very real fire risk. My son who is a leading hand at such a processing mill out here has told me before that a large proportion of the canola oil produced is used for the production of explosives due to the high energy yield of that substance- as you and most people interested would know that it is very similar to diesel oil and the fact that canola oil (used) is used for making bio - diesel. Therefore they are substances that I would not even consider putting near or on my machines heat producing components.

But I shall work on something else and this time research and validate my thoughts before going off half cocked.

Thank you for pointing out what you have.