Worth of Thermal Compounds:Which is the best one ???

[KKK]

Guys please post your opinions about the use of Thermal compounds from Antec,Coolermaster and the others.....
moreover please mention whick one do each of you use and it's performance!

Personally i go for the Antec Silver compound worth 720 bucks.....too good performance!!

[vijay_7287]

me too for antec

[Kniwor]

Is arctic silver yet not availabe

http://www.arcticsilver.com/

the best in the world, go for it if u can get...

i heard it was available in mumbai for 600 something, that was months back, by now it should have been in delhi, kolkata and banglore atleast

[hotdogXP]

hi fellows, I m curious too, what is the use of the thermal compound and how much of a difference will it make on the performance when im just using the processor at stock speeds and not overclocking the cpu.

[mangemayur]

hotdogXP... our processor are not in direct contact with the heatsink... due to some or other reason there is always some gap...
the job of thermal compound is to fill this gap.. (every one know this)..
now its simple thermal physics... Air is very bad conductor of heat.... so u have to fill this gap with some thing.. which can
1. a really good conductor of heat (my prescott heats upto 100+ if the heatsink is not connected)
2. it should able to fill that gap evenly.. ie no air bubble or something like that (thats the reason this compound are available in paste form but nott in powder form)
3. not it depends on this compound... as it becomes the weekest link between the processor surface and the heatsink surface... how much heat to be transferred.. the better the compound.. more heat canbe transferred frm processor to heatsink
4. at time when ppl review the heatsink (ex toms hardware) they check it with the stock thermal compund they get with it and the artic silver 5 or..... and they actually find the difference.. that means even if the heat sink is really good..but the thermal compound can become the bottleneck

hope i had explained yr query

[hotdogXP]

yeah thanks for the reply dude, So I was thinking AMD's stock coolers are given very good reviews, so instead of spending money on branded coolers like zalman or thermalright if I get a good thermal compound and use it , it would be better economically and performance wise, wouldnt it??

[mangemayur]

it will definatly cool down to some extent.. but finaly whether to change the Cooler depends on the amoung heat generaetd.
by using good compund. u will able to use the Heatsink completly.. but mine was different case.. the fan on stock intel heatsink use to rotate at almost 4000rpm and it use to make noise like a vacume cleaner.. Also it wasnt sufficient.. so instead of using the compound i change the heatsink to thermaltake bigtyphoon...
the advantage... the CPU never crosse 63-65 at full load
and noise is ZERO.. the fan is really good quality and rotates at 1100rpm (1300 is the max it can do)

u can always try with the better compund if the heat peoblem is not much... but before spending on anything make sure that u r providing enough vantilation and inwards cool airflow

[royal]

my vote goes to ARCTIC SILVER

[hotdogXP]

My AMD X2 CPU temp at load does not cross 50*C, its 42*C at idle, so I guess its better to just get the Artic Silver Thermal Compound. Is the application of the compound a one time thing or should I reapply it after a period of time.

I have a VIP G100 cabinet, it has a side door fan, 2 antec led fans at the back, 1 ordinary(local make) fan in the front, all are 80mm fans. All of the fans are set to blow the air from inside to outside. Is this arrangement good or should I also consider air intake setup too. What will happen if I dont do this.

[mangemayur]

make yr front Fan as intake... it must be at the lower side... hence it will able to take the cool air in... also the side fan (Which i think will be near to yr AGP / PCIe slot.. make that also as input....
and the 2 fans on the back ( +1 of the PSU) will blow the air out
so u will have a proper flow of air....
i dont have much knoweldge of the AMDs.. so just checkout wether the 42*c is higer or what (if this was intel then definatly not at all ) and it depends on that whether u have to go for a thermal compound or not