Does epoxy containing steel conduct electricity?

wwenze · Post by **wwenze** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 1:39 am

As above. No idea where to post this.

merovingian · Post by **merovingian** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:03 am

Some, if you want non electronic charge conductive, thermally conductive paste you shoud use arctic aluminum adhesive.

alglove · Post by **alglove** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:47 pm

Actually, that would be Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive, not "Aluminum". Alumina is an oxide of aluminum, which makes it a nonconducting, noncapacitive ceramic material. Besides, it makes Googling for it easier.

Straker · Post by **Straker** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 4:19 pm

most of it won't, probably depends on the brand and type though. what would you use it for anyways? if you used it as a thermal adhesive, you'd have a hard time cleaning it off the heat sink to reuse it after the CPU fries.

merovingian · Post by **merovingian** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 6:06 pm

alglove wrote:Actually, that would be Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive, not "Aluminum". Alumina is an oxide of aluminum, which makes it a nonconducting, noncapacitive ceramic material. Besides, it makes Googling for it easier.

Phew, I didn't know that. So, do I need that for watercooling to protect my hardware or can I just use as5?

(charge leak to copper to water to copper to other components)

swivelguy2 · Post by **swivelguy2** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 6:22 pm

Charge is only going to "leak" to the copper of a waterblock if the waterblock makes contact with something that it shouldn't... like the pins of a CPU or interconnects of a GPU.

Under normal conditions, there is no electrical interface between a heatsink/waterblock and anything but the heat spreader of an IC.

Wwenze, perhaps you can give us more information on what you're going to be using this epoxy for, and perhaps a link (mcmaster or otherwise) to the metal-filled epoxy in question?

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 7:51 pm

I have an idea of the epoxy in question, assuming its the one you find in the store in the epoxy sections. IIRC, it says on the packaging to not use it if you need it to conduct electricity. Though I don't know about its other electrical properties.

alglove · Post by **alglove** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:31 am

merovingian wrote:Phew, I didn't know that. So, do I need that for watercooling to protect my hardware or can I just use as5?

(charge leak to copper to water to copper to other components)

Swivelguy2 is right about the charge leak not occurring under normal circumstances. Also, Arctic Silver 5 is formulated not to conduct electricity. It actually has some aluminum oxide, zinc oxide, and boron nitride mixed in. It is slightly capacitive, but that only matters when it comes into contact with electrical pins, traces, leads, etc. For heatsinks, waterblocks, and the like, it does not matter (unless you do something stupid like hook it up to some bare wire coming from your power supply

).

Now that I look at the Arctic Silver 5 webpage, it specifically states, "Arctic Silver 5 is optimized for use between modern high-power CPUs and high performance heatsinks or water-cooling solutions."