How to apply artic silver 5 paste?

Tepid said:

They are not all equal, and AS5 beats them all.

Here you go... Arctic Silver beat by .... toothpaste... yep... toothpaste.

Thermal transfer compound comparison

CarlTR6 said:

That is a really good article. Hilarious about the toothpaste! I certainly agree about the misuse of statistics. Figures don't lie; but liars figure.

Yeah, one of my all time favorites, that one... Of course it's just because of the moisture in the toothpaste, once that evaporates -- different story.

Actually my favorite thermal compound is one you don't often see outside of production environments...

Loctite TC-175-125 ThermstrateTC Phase-Change Thermal Compound - Stanley Supply & Services

It has a consistency like bar soap. Swipe a patch onto the heatsink, drop it in place and you're good to go. It's a phase-change compound so each time the chip gets over about 60c it re-seats itself. A friend put me onto the stuff, been using the same applicator now for a couple of years (one bar does about 200 chips)... not bad at under $20 per applicator.

CarlTR6 said:

Now that is a good tip! I will have to buy a bar of that. Thanks much. I am a big user of other Loctite products, especially with my vintage bikes and their vibration.

Well, just don't grab the wrong tube... I'm thinking you don't want to phase change your brake pads or threadlock your cpu...

Man, maybe I should take the OCZ Arctic Silver out of my system specs, seeing as how it got ousted by toothpaste! LOL

Actually, I've conducted my own tests on thermal paste, and there is a bigger difference in brands than what this guy came up with. My CPU core temp dropped 8 degrees celsius switching to the OCZ from the thermal paste that came with the CPU.

So, does it really matter? Yep!

Thanks all for the information shared here.

MadMaxData said:

Man, maybe I should take the OCZ Arctic Silver out of my system specs, seeing as how it got ousted by toothpaste! LOL

Actually, I've conducted my own tests on thermal paste, and there is a bigger difference in brands than what this guy came up with. My CPU core temp dropped 8 degrees celsius switching to the OCZ from the thermal paste that came with the CPU.

So, does it really matter? Yep!

It certainly does. 8 degrees is a fairly significant difference. BUT (and you had to know that was coming)... a large part of that could boil down to application. Getting a smooth gap free layer vs one with air bubbles or blobs is going to make a huge difference as well... perhaps even bigger than what you noted.

Another thing to take into consideration is that AS pastes go through a cycle not unlike that of Zinc Oxide pastes... The work miracles at first, then a few days later the temperatures begin to rise as the paste's carrier dries out... but if you wait for it, a few days after that the temperatures will begin to come back down, eventually landing at about half of the initial difference. -8 degrees, rising to 0, settling to -4 is very common with paste type thermal compounds.

Phase change compounds like Thermstrate tend to work a little differently. At first they may seem to run hotter but over the course of a week or two the temperatures will come down, often lower than those initially seen with Arctic Silver... +5 settling slowly to -5 is quite common.

The real problem with tests and benchmarks like thos in the article (and most other tech sites) is that they do not test these compounds over time, reporting only the initial state of the compound. It can take up to 6 months to correctly assess a thermal compound. Then when technicians see the temperatures changing they panic and keep redoing it, only to find the same thing happening again without ever realizing it's perfectly normal. Or, they see the initial bad specs for phase change compounds and ignore them thinking they are not as good.

All good things come to those who wait, Grasshopper

I've had a tube of AS5 sealed in a plastic bag, for over a year. I used a 'pea-sized' amount on my last build, and its been in that bag ever since.

How long will the AS5 be good to use?