Hi,
Can someone explain to me the purpose of themal grease between the HS and CPU. Is it fill in imperfections?
Also, how much should I put on?
Does the brand of thermal grease matter?
Thanks,
Jerry
Thermal grease - how much, what does it do, do brands matter
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Yes, the thermal grease fills in imperfections in the surface of the materials. You should only need to use a very little bit, as surface imperfections are slight. Squirt on a drop of grease, and scrape it across the chip with an old credit card like a squeegee.
And yes, the brand matters. Arctic Silver 3 is the best on the market, and I have seen estimates of 6 degree improvements by using this brand. All I know is my CPU has overheated with radio-shack brand grease, and that was enough to convince me.
And yes, the brand matters. Arctic Silver 3 is the best on the market, and I have seen estimates of 6 degree improvements by using this brand. All I know is my CPU has overheated with radio-shack brand grease, and that was enough to convince me.
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Silver thermal compounds are the best mainly because silver has one of the best thermal conductivity.
Thermal grease is not that good, you will notice a difference jumping to silver compounds. I lost 6C by using AS3 instead of the thermal grease supplied with Zalman.
I also read a different silver based compound that actually did better than AS3 but the difference was tiny, about 1C under certain conditions.
So get silver, its the way to go.
Thermal grease is not that good, you will notice a difference jumping to silver compounds. I lost 6C by using AS3 instead of the thermal grease supplied with Zalman.
I also read a different silver based compound that actually did better than AS3 but the difference was tiny, about 1C under certain conditions.
So get silver, its the way to go.
If you want to be really on the cutting edge, you might want to check out my earlier post about Shin Etsu G-751 thermal compound. The links in that post have some good info about thermal compounds, and one is a roundup of a bunch of different brands. Note what Ralf Hutter says in his reply, though; it seems like Shin Etsu might be a bit of a pain to use, and you don't get much of it.
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Thanks for the pointer. I went with the silver (AS3), but also changed the heat sink at the same time. So I don't know if changing the thermal grease had any effect. However, the temps are low, so at least nothing went wrong.ez2remember wrote:Silver thermal compounds are the best mainly because silver has one of the best thermal conductivity.
Thermal grease is not that good, you will notice a difference jumping to silver compounds. I lost 6C by using AS3 instead of the thermal grease supplied with Zalman.
I also read a different silver based compound that actually did better than AS3 but the difference was tiny, about 1C under certain conditions.
So get silver , its the way to go.
jerry
Arctic silver website has instructions on how much to use etc:
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silv ... ctions.htm
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silv ... ctions.htm