silver heatsink

[chronic99]

i know silver is a much better conductor than aluminium and copper, so i want a silver heatsink obviously, but i havent won the lottery, so.

There are liquids on sale which when you put metal in it coats it with a layer of silver, dont know if anyones heard of them.
Anyway is this a good idea or NOT

[azhari]

I assume you already have a heatsink that you want to plate with silver. Personally I wouldn't do that for three reasons.

First, coating a heatsink with silver in a liquid bath will not get good enough molecular bonding between the heatsink and the deposited silver. A process known as anodizing will do that quite well, but I don't think there are any home kits to do this (check at a local gun shop where they might have anodizing equipment).

Second, the layer of silver will be way too thin compared to the heatsink to be really effective.

Third, unless you anodize, the layer thickness will be very uneven across the surface, which would give poor contact with the cpu core.

I may be wrong on one or more of these, but as I said, I wouldn't do it myself :D

[Mord-Sith]

Coating a heatsink with silver will not help at all. The layer is just too thin. As long as your dreaming you might as well make the heatsink out of cusil its much more expensive and conducts heats better.

I suggest you read the cooling articles that have been posted on the front page the last few days. Very helpfull and they answer the questions you are asking.

[chronic99]

cheers boys i will take your advice and not do it, it was just and idea and thought i might work, someones got to do it first!!!

[William]

actually the silver mountain is a silver coated heatsink and does quite well. The silver helps out some but not much. The only real way to get the benefit from silver is to have a baseplate of silver or an all silver heatsink.

[Ridenow]

Check out the article Hoot posted for us. He discusses a silver plated HS.

http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=105

[azhari]

Now I remember. There is an HSF with silver heat sink. Its the Silverado by Noise Control. I read about it on Tomshardware guide with a lot of tests done and compared to something like 47 other HSFs. Might want to check it out.