Thermal grease - how much, what does it do, do brands matter

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jerryk
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Thermal grease - how much, what does it do, do brands matter

Post by jerryk » Tue Feb 25, 2003 1:26 pm

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

seishino
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Post by seishino » Tue Feb 25, 2003 1:40 pm

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.

ez2remember
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Post by ez2remember » Tue Feb 25, 2003 4:09 pm

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. :D

Justin_R
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Post by Justin_R » Tue Feb 25, 2003 4:17 pm

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.

Herb W.
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Post by Herb W. » Fri Feb 28, 2003 10:40 pm

I got a few syringes of Shin-Etsu recently - I was told by the retailer that the best way to deal with its relatively thick texture when applying it is to warm it up slightly before application; warming the syringe in your hand could be enough...

jerryk
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Post by jerryk » Sat Mar 01, 2003 7:48 am

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. :D
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. :)

jerry

counterpt
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Post by counterpt » Sat Mar 01, 2003 8:58 am

Arctic silver website has instructions on how much to use etc:
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silv ... ctions.htm

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