Arctic Silver not working in the cold?

[ken257]

I am using Artic Silver 1 in my chilled water system. The water is at about -17C. The system runs fine for a couple of days then after that I have to start lowering the speed to prevent lockups. If I take the water block off, clean up the old grease and reaply I am back up to full speed and the cycle starts all over again.

Right now I am using good old Radio Shack grease and I do not have this trouble with it. Is there any improvement with Artic Silver 2?

[Phil]

That is an odd problem, I would suggest that the next time you put some on you let it heat up first, just stop the water flow for about 20seconds or so (don't let the cpu temp go over 70oC any way) I and a few other people have noticed improved performance from AS in doing this after putting it on, with the low wattage of the celeron I usually run it in without a fan for an hour or so to really heat up

[ken257]

Phil (May 03, 2001 04:10 p.m.):
That is an odd problem, I would suggest that the next time you put some on you let it heat up first, just stop the water flow for about 20seconds or so (don't let the cpu temp go over 70oC any way) I and a few other people have noticed improved performance from AS in doing this after putting it on, with the low wattage of the celeron I usually run it in without a fan for an hour or so to really heat up

Thanks for the input. I stoped by the local comp store and picked up a tube of Artic Silver 2 today. I was looking on there web site and it said AS2 has an extended temperature range of -40C to 160C. I wonder if this is because they knew there was a problem with cold. When using pelts the cpu temp will vary and heat up under load but with chilled water there is no heating up ever so you may be right in that I need some heat to set the grease . The next time I take my system apart I will try the AS2 and see what happens, for now though the white goop is doing a fine job.

[woofer]

ken257 (May 03, 2001 11:49 a.m.):
I am using Artic Silver 1 in my chilled water system. The water is at about -17C. The system runs fine for a couple of days then after that I have to start lowering the speed to prevent lockups. If I take the water block off, clean up the old grease and reaply I am back up to full speed and the cycle starts all over again.

Right now I am using good old Radio Shack grease and I do not have this trouble with it. Is there any improvement with Artic Silver 2?

Thats strange ,as i am using Artic Silver 1 in my Vapochill -15c and have had no problems with it losing its heat transfer properties.

Before the T-Bird i had a P III 850@1190mhz -25c running for 5 months , again no problems ??