Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive Review 

Manufacturer: Arctic Silver LLC. 
Price: $14.00
Supplied by: Sidewinder Computers

by Dean Barker  (4/22/2001)

Introduction:

Generic Thermal Paste has been around for quite some time and up until not too terrible long ago silicon paste was your only real choice.  Along came the increased availability of Thermal Tape (aka Frag Tape.)  If you ever wondered why it is called Frag Tape, thank Kyle Bennett from the HardOCP.  When thermal tape was so hard to come by Kyle found a truck load of it and he sold it as, you guessed it, "Frag Tape."  History lesson aside, the reason for the popularity of Thermal Tape is easy to figure out.  Many video cards don't utilize the push pins that hold the heat sinks onto the video chipset.  These are attached via some form of Thermal Bonding agent.  As we all know the reasons for yanking these off is two fold.  First, the thermal bond is usually not covering the entire chipset surface robbing you of cooling potential.  Secondly, the heatsinks more often than not "can be improved upon."  Nice way of saying sometimes the stock stuff sucks ass.  If you are a real overclocker you can't even think let alone look at a piece of electrical equipment without wondering if a heatsink could help.  The hot ticket now is RAM cooling.  Think I'm kidding, click here to take a gander at the latest thing from Thermaltake.  The big question is, how to attach whatever you got to whatever you have without shooting yourself in the foot.  

What we have done here is to compare the heat transfer efficiency of Thermal Tape versus Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive.  The Thermal Tape we are using is Parker Chomerics T404.  Those cats over at Parker Chomerics sent us some tape some time back and as always, thanks guys!  A special big thanks goes out to Gary and his crew over at Sidewinder Computers for sending us all the Arctic Silver Adhesive.  Quick pimpage note: drop in on our sponsors, without their backing none of this would be possible.

The warnings regarding Arctic Silver must have been written thinking that 5 year olds were gonna buy the stuff.  Check out the warnings off the Arctic Silver web site.

Important Precautions 

• Don't eat it. 

• Don't squirt it in your eye, nose, ear, or any other accessible body orifice.

• Don't give it to children or leave it laying around where kids can get a hold of it.

• Don't smoke it.

• Clean either Part A or Part B off your skin with isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol. 

• Do not glue things where they do not belong. 

They just took out all the fun!  This stuff is promoted as a "permanent bond" unless you cut your mixture with some Arctic Silver Thermal Paste.  I didn't cut it, then again, I didn't know that it was billed as PERMANENT.  But, with the help of an Exacto knife what ever I glued down came up with only moderate difficulty.

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