[H]ard|OCP

Navigation

• [H] Forums
• Archives
• Search
• [H] Folding

Heatsink Compound Roundup

Yes, a look at that stuff you have to put between your heatsink and your CPU. What works, what does not, and should you buy all the hype you see spewed?

We get mail every day asking about what we think is the best heatsink compound, and it has been a while since we actually took down some data. Seeing how things change and new products come onto the market, we figured it was time to do a little roundup. This is not going to be an in-depth analysis of each product, but rather a quick look at what it is and how it did when compared to the others in the field.

The Contenders (in no particular order):

The Name Brands

GC Electronics Type 44 Heatsink Compound - I will start with this one as it is the one we use for all of our testing here in the Underground Bunker and are very familiar with it. It is an ester based compound (as opposed to silicone) that is white in color and very easy to work with. It is the one in the 1/2 fluid ounce "tub" pictured above. The link I gave you takes you to one of the few places it can be found for sale on the Net. US$5.95 for a full fluid once. That is probably enough to last you the rest of your life...really. I have had the same tub now for six months and I am coming nowhere near the bottom.

Arctic Silver - The company that no doubt pioneered the HSF compound industry as far as retail goes. Arctic Silver's claim to fame is that it contains real silver in the paste, up to 80% to 84% of pure micronized silver. It has an almost toothpaste-like consistency. It is very easy to work with and apply. It does come in a syringe so you can "point and shoot". However, it is worth pointing out that it looks as if this product is not manufactured anymore, but you will surely still find it on retail shelves for a while.

Arctic Silver II - This is the follow-up product to Arctic Silver as I guess they saw a need to improve the product, or at least get some more marketing velocity going. ASII is pretty much the same product as AS, but it is claimed to be made with 99.8% pure micronized silver, with up to 78% to 82% silver content by weight. It too is in a syringe and is easy to apply. I find it funny that they compare themselves to "Cheap Silver Grease" instead of a quality product on their own web page.

AOS Non-Silicone HTC60 - This is a sample compound that is not easily found in retail to my knowledge, but we were able to put our hands on some. The sample came in a syringe, is gray in color, and is very thick. So thick and chunky, in fact, that it was very hard to work with and get spread out properly. I simply threw this one in the mix since it was here on the shelf.

Nanotherm Blue & Nanotherm Ice - I went round and round with these two compounds. I tested, retested, and tested again and kept getting the exact same results. Then I finally went to their website and read that these are the exact same products except that one has the blue coloring mixed in; to give it a cool look, I assume. The idea behind Nanotherm is much like the AS mentioned above, except that instead of using silver, which is electrically conductive, they use ceramic. The Nanotherm comes in a syringe and is very easy to apply and clean up.

The Generics:

White Silicone Compound #1 - (bottom left in picture above) - This packet of "White Goo" comes standard with many HSF units you might purchase. The package is marked with some Chinese characters as well as "Silicone Compound 3ml / SIL-MORE Taiwan". There is not much to be said about this stuff except odds are you got it FREE.

White Silicone Compound #2 - (bottom right in picture above) - This is another packet of "White Goo" that comes standard with many HSF units. It is labeled "Silicone Heat Sink Paste AK-100" and is made by the Flowstar Company LTD in Taiwan. Unlike compound #1, you can find this for sale by the packet at many retailers that specialize in heatsinks, like Plycon and AZZO.

Vantec Silver Compound - This is another silver-based HSF compound. Vantec includes it for free with many of their high performance heatsinks. It comes in a syringe and is pretty easy to use and is comparable in consistency to ASII.

Stars 700 - This is another silver-based heatsink compound that advertises 25% silver. I have included this one as I have seen it packaged with many heatsinks we have gotten recently.

Test Setup:

ABIT KT7A-RAID, Athlon 1400 clocked at 1533MHz, CoolerMaster HCC-002 (CB5-6G52 w/6800 RPM Fan), EnerMax 550 watt PSU, GeForce Ti500, PC166 SDRam, NetGear FA311 NIC. The socket is sealed with silicone and the thermister has been bent upwards to come into contact with the back of our CPU. We have used this setup for a while now and it does produce results that can be reproduced time and time again. We are very comfortable with the setup and feel as though it is extremely accurate in its scaling. Ambient temperature was kept between 76.4 and 77.7 degrees F during testing.

This CPU produces over 90 watts of heat running at 1.533GHz with a Vcore of 1.88 volts. The unit was left running with Prime95 until the temperature stabilized and then we went back and did all the tests a second time to confirm our data. If the data was not confirmed, we ran the test until we got a set of numbers that were near identical. Translation? We did it until we were sure.

Results:

The graph is very easy to read, and seeing that our results are tightly clustered except for two, it leads to a conclusion that will have to be based on more than performance.

Conclusions & Delusions:

Honestly, we have been preaching this lesson for years now, or at least every since there has been a debate on the subject. There is basically no reason to purchase this stuff unless you need some. And in "need", I mean you are out of compound and have to have some more.

We have seen companies claim big decreases in CPU temp with their product. Some have even gone as far as to say their product can give up to 7 or 8 degrees better performance. Well, this may well be true if you compare your product to the absolute "worst" on the market that you can find. As always, be aware of the marketing hype.

As the graph shows from the top eight results, the temperature difference is negligible. If you have to have the best of the best when it comes to performance, your choices are obvious. If one degree does not make you or break you, you might want to look into the other couple of aspects of these compounds.

The first one that comes to mind is ease of use. All of these compounds are pretty easy to apply properly with the exception of the HTC 60. The HTC 60 is a nightmare for applying properly and then when you finally do get the die covered, you are almost guaranteed a layer that is too thick. As we mentioned, HTC 60 is not a retail product, so it should not be a concern anyway.

If you are a serious tweaker, getting the stuff off might be as big an issue as applying it. This is one of the reasons I have never been a fan of the silver-based compounds outside of the fact we could never duplicate their amazing performance claims. These compounds that are based on high percentages of silver are terrible at leaving stains on everything they touch. Your fingers, your board, and your CPU will all fall victim to being left with an ugly scar that is not easily repairable. Some petroleum based solvents will remove it, but we are not a big fan of using gasoline in the Underground Bunker since Steve had that huffing "accident".

Another issue that Matt "CIWS" Waters introduced me to was non-silicone based compounds working better over time. From our reading and research, it seems as though silicone based compounds (and yes, most of your silver compounds do use silicone) have a property called "creep". It seems as though after a long period of time (3 months to a year) a silicone based compound will "creep" possibly leaving air gaps in the mating surface. Non-silicone compounds should not do this and are able to be trusted for longer periods of time. In our latest server installs, we made sure to use ester based compounds on all of our CPUs.

Still, this is just what we like when it comes to compounds. We would be hard pressed to tell you that any of the top eight above are not products that are worth your consideration. When it comes down to us making a suggestion, though, we fully stand behind the Type 44 product as we think it gives you the best of all worlds. A top performing compound that is easy to use and is also easy on the wallet. Remember, a fluid ounce of the stuff will most likely get lost long before you will ever use it all.

Lastly, we left out thermal pads for a reason. First off, they are notorious for being trash. Second, most of the thermal pad units are only good for one application, then they are toast. That makes it hard for us to test properly. While there certainly are exceptions to this rules, we don't suggest using thermal pads that come with many heatsinks you see. Clean them off with a tool and solvent that will not harm the mating surface of the heatsink, and get you some thermal compound...even if it is the $2 kind.

UPDATE:

We know that many of you wanted to find affordable Type 44 GC Electronics brand heatsink paste as we use above for sale of the Net. Well, I WAS a big hard to find affordably. I called the local shop that I purchase it at and they placed it on their website just for you guys. A half ouce tub (like ours) is a little less than US$7.00. With shipping you will certainly get to US$10 which is their minimum order amount. GET YOU SOME PASTE!

Many thanks to the kind folks at Altex.Com for making it happen so easily.