Arctic Silver I, II or III? Official Answers In Here...

[littlezipp]

Ok, I have not been in the oc'ing scene for over a year now, and am just getting back in.
What I am seeing is that people are staying away from the Arctic Silver III and going for the II.
My question is, how much better is the II over the I.
I have a tube of one from my 800eb oc'ing days (at 1ghz, I was so proud), and want to know if it is better than the standard pad on a retail Intel heatsink.

 

[steimm]

I'm using ASIII now and earlier I used the ASII, I can see a appr. 2 degrees difference (lower).

But it took a while (2 days or something before it showed) to see the difference just as some reviews says and Arctic Silver recommends.

/steimm

 

[Shmorq]

AS3 dropped my full load temps by 3deg C over AS2. But this small difference could be due to the way I applied the thermal compound.

That being said, all decent thermal compounds are better than the pad that comes on the retail heatsinks. I would personally remove the pad and apply some of AS1. I don't know how much better AS2 if better than AS1 however.

 

[pcmodem]

Yo,
Arctic Silver II seemed 1-2 C better than Arctic Silver. Arctic Silver III seems 1-2 C better than Arctic Silver II.

Note that Arctic Silver III seems to have issues with breakdown due to excessive vibration. If you have a case with a lot of fans running fast, do not apply Arctic Silver III unless you're positive that you have sufficient dampening. Arctic Silver II doesn't have this issue.

-PCM

 

[littlezipp]

It's a Lian Li case with 3 case fans, and 2 power supply fans.
So you are saying get the AS2 in my case?

 

[Nevin]

Actually what can cause a problem with the thermal interface is a vibrating out-of-balance fan on the heatsink itself, not the number of fans. This will eventually cause a problem with any thermal compound. The problem shows up quicker with AS3 than our earlier products due to AS3's improved flow characteristics.

So what allows it to outperform our earlier compounds also make the AS3's thermal joint more susceptible to excessive vibration.

The thermal joint is not the only part of the system at risk with a vibrating fan. Some people have had their CPU cores cracked by the moving heatsink. (Kyle at HardOCP had this happen to him and wrote about it some time ago.) So don't use a high-RPM fan that has a damaged blade, a bad bearing or is out of balance.

Luckily, fans that are bad enough to cause a problem are few and far between.

Nevin House
Arctic Silver, Inc.

 

[astroview]

Bump to a good thread, its really nice to see that people from the companies us geeks use post to these boards.
You're one of the few I've ever seen post in any official manner on here Nevin.

 

[littlezipp]

Thank you for the answer.
Looks at Nevin's profile, he really does work for Arctic Silver!
Sounds good enough to me, ASIII here I come.

 

[Bozo Galora]

Nevin: 2 questions...........

I changed the heatsink fan on a Geforce 3 and used arctic silver one or two (can't remember) and the card
would't boot right after the change. While many things could have happened, since I had read that AS was
non conductive or "slightly" conductive depending on reviewer, I didn't worry about getting the overflow
directly on the gpu pins. So, once and for all, right from the source, - could the ASII have conducted enough
to short something?

I also noticed on an SK-6 (all copper) that had been on a cpu for about 6 moths, the ASII had begun to
etch pits into the base. Seemed to be reactive to copper. Comments?

 

[rgowen]

For the GPUs of video cards, you should use Arctic Alumina. This is the one that is suppose to have no conductivity. Sounds like you shorted your GF3 out by not carefully applying the AS on it. I ran Arctic Silver 1 on a GF3 with no problems but I left a bit of a minor border open on the GPU to avoid any spill over when it was compressed from the heatsink and fan.

 

[Richardito]

<< Nevin: 2 questions...........

I changed the heatsink fan on a Geforce 3 and used arctic silver one or two (can't remember) and the card
would't boot right after the change. While many things could have happened, since I had read that AS was
non conductive or "slightly" conductive depending on reviewer, I didn't worry about getting the overflow
directly on the gpu pins. So, once and for all, right from the source, - could the ASII have conducted enough
to short something?

I also noticed on an SK-6 (all copper) that had been on a cpu for about 6 moths, the ASII had begun to
etch pits into the base. Seemed to be reactive to copper. Comments? >>



Since you haven't received an answer I'll communicate my thoughts. I've heard of other people shorting out their vcards with AS using the thermal compound and the epoxy adhesive. This is very posible because, after all, it contains a metal, silver. And we know metals conduct electricity because of the abundant electrons. Other people in this forum (and others) will dismiss these occurences as folk tales, but I really believe in them. Heck, you are an example. If the AS is 'eating away' at the copper base then there must be reduction-oxidation reaction between a component in the compound and the copper.