A new heatsink compound (thermal grease)

R

RMC

Hello All

Henkel Loctite have released a new heatsink compound which comes in the form
of a bar of material, deployed rather like a lip-stick.

You rub it on the heatsink/component interface and it applies an appropriate
layer of solid material. under high clamping pressures, the solid undergoes
a change to a liquid at 60 deg C (approx. 150 deg F) and is forced into all
the tiny gaps (present due to imperfections, machining tolerances etc.).

The thermal conductivity is 20% lower than the usual thermal grease - it
says it's 0.03 degC/W at 20psi clamping pressure, dropping to 0.02 degC/W at
100psi - and gives 100% surface wetting with easy application, it says.

My Prescott, o/c from 3 to 3.3 GHz, is running at stock voltages with the
stock Intel heastink. CPU temps reported by MBM5 (Abit AI7) are 60-62 deg C.
I plan to re-mount the heatsink having applied some of this thermstrate, and
I'll let you know if I see a drop in temperature. The current heatsink
compound is the usual white alumina-loaded stuff.

Here's some info on thermstrate:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D4F321069

Does anybody know what the thermal conductivity is that's quoted for the
silver-loaded materials?

Cheers

RMC, England
 
D

Dave C.

RMC said:
Hello All

Henkel Loctite have released a new heatsink compound which comes in the form
of a bar of material, deployed rather like a lip-stick.

You rub it on the heatsink/component interface and it applies an appropriate
layer of solid material. under high clamping pressures, the solid undergoes
a change to a liquid at 60 deg C (approx. 150 deg F) and is forced into all
the tiny gaps (present due to imperfections, machining tolerances etc.).

The thermal conductivity is 20% lower than the usual thermal grease - it
says it's 0.03 degC/W at 20psi clamping pressure, dropping to 0.02 degC/W at
100psi - and gives 100% surface wetting with easy application, it says.

My Prescott, o/c from 3 to 3.3 GHz, is running at stock voltages with the
stock Intel heastink. CPU temps reported by MBM5 (Abit AI7) are 60-62 deg C.
I plan to re-mount the heatsink having applied some of this thermstrate, and
I'll let you know if I see a drop in temperature. The current heatsink
compound is the usual white alumina-loaded stuff.

Here's some info on thermstrate:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D4F321069

Does anybody know what the thermal conductivity is that's quoted for the
silver-loaded materials?

Cheers

RMC, England
Click to expand...

I'm running a Prescott 3.0, not overclocked at all. I've got a Cooler
Master "Aero 4 Lite".

http://www.coolermaster.com/index.p...=DI4-7J74F&other_title=+DI4-7J74F+Aero 4 Lite

With the stock thermal pad, I have not seen my Prescott go higher than 102F
under load. In fact, it's usually about 90F idle and goes up to just UNDER
100F under load. 102F was the very highest temperature I've seen. I use
the speed control to set the fan at 2700RPM, as anything higher is
noticeably louder, as far as noise goes. I don't overclock any processor,
at all. But I COULD overclock the Prescott to 3.3 and still keep it down to
about ~100F under load, simply by cranking up the RPM of the cooler to
maximum. 150F is hot as Hell. I've seen that on a Prescott, but only in a
case where I *expected* to see such high temperatures, due to overall poor
air circulation in the system itself. Yeah, 150F may be within normal
operating range, but as you can easily drop that temperature by a third, why
wouldn't you?

I think you need a new cooler as well as a change in thermal
ompound. -Dave
 
J

John H.

Where did you buy it at.
John.H.
I'm running a Prescott 3.0, not overclocked at all. I've got a Cooler
Master "Aero 4 Lite".

http://www.coolermaster.com/index.p...=DI4-7J74F&other_title=+DI4-7J74F+Aero 4 Lite

With the stock thermal pad, I have not seen my Prescott go higher than 102F
under load. In fact, it's usually about 90F idle and goes up to just UNDER
100F under load. 102F was the very highest temperature I've seen. I use
the speed control to set the fan at 2700RPM, as anything higher is
noticeably louder, as far as noise goes. I don't overclock any processor,
at all. But I COULD overclock the Prescott to 3.3 and still keep it down to
about ~100F under load, simply by cranking up the RPM of the cooler to
maximum. 150F is hot as Hell. I've seen that on a Prescott, but only in a
case where I *expected* to see such high temperatures, due to overall poor
air circulation in the system itself. Yeah, 150F may be within normal
operating range, but as you can easily drop that temperature by a third, why
wouldn't you?

I think you need a new cooler as well as a change in thermal
ompound. -Dave
Click to expand...
 
D

Dave C.

John H. said:
Where did you buy the thermstrate tc compound.
Click to expand...

I didn't. The thermal compound came as part of the cooler, pre-applied to
the bottom of the cooler, in the area where the cooler contacts the socket
478 processor. It had a plastic dish type thing on the bottom of the cooler
to protect the thermal compound. You remove the plastic dish thingie, set
the cooler on the processor, clip the heatsink to the motherboard brackets,
plug the fan into a (hard drive type) power connector, install the control
knob in an expansion slot or floppy bay, then plug the RPM sensor wire into
the motherboard's CPU FAN connector. DONE! No messing around with thermal
compound, unless you want to. But with a Prescott running at ~100F under
load with stock thermal compound, why bother changing it? -Dave
 
C

Clyde

RMC said:
Hello All

Henkel Loctite have released a new heatsink compound which comes in the form
of a bar of material, deployed rather like a lip-stick.

You rub it on the heatsink/component interface and it applies an appropriate
layer of solid material. under high clamping pressures, the solid undergoes
a change to a liquid at 60 deg C (approx. 150 deg F) and is forced into all
the tiny gaps (present due to imperfections, machining tolerances etc.).

The thermal conductivity is 20% lower than the usual thermal grease - it
says it's 0.03 degC/W at 20psi clamping pressure, dropping to 0.02 degC/W at
100psi - and gives 100% surface wetting with easy application, it says.

My Prescott, o/c from 3 to 3.3 GHz, is running at stock voltages with the
stock Intel heastink. CPU temps reported by MBM5 (Abit AI7) are 60-62 deg C.
I plan to re-mount the heatsink having applied some of this thermstrate, and
I'll let you know if I see a drop in temperature. The current heatsink
compound is the usual white alumina-loaded stuff.

Here's some info on thermstrate:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D4F321069

Does anybody know what the thermal conductivity is that's quoted for the
silver-loaded materials?

Cheers

RMC, England
Click to expand...

Having had an expensive lesson from Intel on 'solid' thermal compounds,
I'm very leery.

Of course, Intel's boxed heatsink comes with their thermal pad already
stuck on there. When the P4 gets hot, it melts to fill everything in
like your product.

Well, I was getting over heating on my P4 3.0 GHz HT. I noticed that the
heatsink fins were covered in dust. So, I opened it up and unstrapped
the heatsink. Then I pulled and had to pull hard. It came out, but with
the P4 still glued to the heatsink. That room temp, solid thermal pad
worked like construction adhesive.

I was able to get them apart, but it took a bit. A few pins were bent,
but not off. So, I straightened them - carefully. Alas, something got
broken. I had to replace both the processor and the mobo. That was an
expensive lesson.

Therefore, I will only be using thermal conductors that won't be glue
when and if I ever need to take them apart.

Clyde
 
R

RMC

the P4 still glued to the heatsink. That room temp, solid thermal pad
worked like construction adhesive.
Click to expand...
Therefore, I will only be using thermal conductors that won't be glue when
and if I ever need to take them apart.
Click to expand...


I know what you mean - the same thing happened to a friend of mine.
However, the material that I am highlighting goes on as a very very thin,
non-adhesive layer. In fact, one of the salient points is that it remains
workable throughout its life and will not act as a glue.

My original post is a little unclear when I talk about its thermal
conductivity being 20% less. What I meant to imply (from the product's
datasheet) is that its thermal resitstance is 20% less, i.e. the thermal
conductivity is 20 % *better* than normal white paste.

I need to now find out the thermal conductivity ofthe silver-loaded material
so I can do some sums. Formy part, I plan on taking the stock SHF assembly
off, cleaning the white compound off (that I used in place of the Intel TIM)
and trying this new stuff. If the rsults get me lower temps, then that's
that.

I intend to play with other HSFs as a matter of course, including the new
Thermaltake BigWater, which sounds very good VFM.

Cheers

RMC, England
 
R

RMC

Dave
air circulation in the system itself. Yeah, 150F may be within normal
operating range, but as you can easily drop that temperature by a third,
why
wouldn't you?
Click to expand...

Yes, I am aware that additional cooling will further drop the temperatures.
I was including the figures here as a reference to the fact that they are my
reference point, from which I can determine any change in performance as a
function of heatsink compound, all other factors remaining unchanged.

There are a variety of additional factors which contribute towards CPU
cooling and I am looking at those separately.


RMC, England
 
C

Clyde

JADE said:
1 Question........... why did you remove the HS for just a 'blow out'
cleaning?
Click to expand...

Stupidity.

I was thinking "I'll vaccume that, but better take it out for the static
problem." (I didn't have any canned air at the time.) In the future,
I'll get some more canned air.

Clyde
 

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