The HardwareLogic Thermal Compound Round-Up

[One4yu2c]

Regardless of the technical specifications, Arctic Silver 5's time has come and gone. It's still great paste if you already own a tube, but for new buyers, there are better performing greases out there that cost less and have little to no cure time. Being non conductive is just icing on an already tastier cake (figure of speech - don't eat the paste).

[Capper]

I like AS5, don't get me wrong.....but as Paul said, and as I pointed out in the article
, considering cure time, and everything else, there is little reason to recommend AS5 anymore.......its not just us, look around forums and any other review, the compounds we recommend typically outperform AS5 by a good margin.

On an unrelated note, AS5 was one of the better tasting compounds.

[RA1D]

Originally Posted by One4yu2c

don't eat the paste

LOLWUT?

[Reloadron]

Originally Posted by Mondoman

Nice post; I'd quibble a tiny bit and interpret AS's text above as saying that the 88% includes the silver, and that the 12% is the weight of the oil components of the compound.

Yeah, I sort of got that from my read but really wasn't sure. Then too, didn't see where it mattered too much as to the conduction / capacitance thing.

Thanks for the kudo.

No Capper, I am not an AS rep.

Ron

[Capper]

No Capper, I am not an AS rep.

Ron

Not you!!!!!

[RA1D]

i'm not an AS rep either

[screwballl]

me either... otherwise I would be touting the crap out of it

[Mondoman]

Originally Posted by Capper

You wouldn't happen to be an AS Rep would you?

No, sorry. No financial connection to the cooling industry. As for any thermal compound's time being over, I find it hard to tell for sure from the reviews I've seen, since I haven't found a review that actually measured either the volume, thickness, or weight of compound being applied in each test. Since performance seems to inversely scale with thickness of the TIM layer, AFAICT that makes them at least somewhat apples-to-oranges comparisons.

PS - I agree the whole cure time issue is a bit of a red herring and the compounds should be compared on their newly-installed performance. I suspect the whole issue was initially raised way back when more as a marketing response by AS to reports of no major temperature improvements after installation.

[Capper]

Ok, lets break this down a bit.......you are making it far too technical. and the reason I asked if you were a company rep, or affiliated with AS is that I see from browsing around forums, that you are a BIG AS fan.

First, if volume, layering, etc was that big of a deal....then these companies would have to put together a perfect application system......as it is now, the testing we've done, as well as that done by Benchmark Reviews and other sites, is as close to "apples to apples" as you can get. Looking at it in a reasonable light, you can't expect more than for a person to follow the directions given with a product.

There is a difference between being reasonable and expecting uniform results, and taking a comparative too far, and making things unrealistic.

I'm trying to find a good example....but one of the knocks is using the exact same amount of thermal compound for every test. Different compounds have different application instructions and require different amounts.

[One4yu2c]

Basically echoing Capper's comments, but this is quite simple:

* Test each compound according the company's directions
* Analyze temperatures
* Analyze cost
* Analyze ease of application, cure time, or anything else that's relevant

Arctic Silver 5 is a great thermal compound that performs with the best of them, but it's no longer best in class. I personally use Tuniq's TX-2, which I apply the same as AS5 (thin line down the middle), and it cools slightly better and costs less. The cure time and conductivity 'issues' are just bonuses. Whether anyone wants to label that apples-to-apples or apples-to-carrots, it doesn't change the outcome.