radio shack thermal grease

[ensabah6]

hi,
i used radio shack thermal grease from a couple of years back, while i could buy artic silver, is it worth it? esp since thermal grease is sspread so thin and then squished out when heatsink is mounted, i find it hard to believe a film less than 1mm it makes a difference.

the radio shack thermal grease makes no mention of having micronized silver.
the tube looks exactly the same tube you get at any radio shack today (and they still sell 486, pentium heatsinks!)

this was from my celeron 300a days. of course, if i were to buy brand new thermal grease, i'd buy artic silver, but i have plenty left over of the radio shack and i use it sparingly.

i guess my question is this: since i have plenty of radio shack thermal greese, and the stuff is spread thin and squished out, why should i buy artic silver?

[Captain Newbie]

Yes, Arctic Silver may provide a demonstrated improvement because the particle size is smaller.

Whether the improvement will be significant or not is up to you to judge. I use AS5 simply because I refuse to accept substitutes.

[Lancelot]

You WILL see a couple degrees difference when switching to Arctic Silver. However if your current OC is of your likings and temps are nice enough you can stick to your white grease. It's still better than using the standard thermal pad anyways...

[Albuquerque]

Actually, as dumb as you may think it sounds, either XtremeSystems or someone like that did a whole compendium of thermal greases about a year ago. They used AS3, AS5, a ton of other stuff, and they also used the cheapo Radio Shack white lithium thermal grease.

Quite surprisingly, the Radio Shack goo came in second place only to AS5, and by a very small margin. The only worry that was conveyed was unsurity as to how long it would stay "liquid", as eventually the Radio Shack compound has the ability to dry out.

It's not as bad as you might expect, and it's been connecting all of my components for quite a long time.

[ensabah6]

thanks, i will try googling for that review.

i used radio shack cause i've got it from the past several years back. are we talking about a fraction of a degree differences?

i don't deny maybe artic silver might reduce 1 C, where ase Radio Shack .5C, and that makes artic silver 50% better, but .5 C is only a small fraction of the total thermal system.

[nebacadneezer]

I ordered some OCZ Thermal Paste recently from Newegg. Before i had only used AS (3 & 5), but OCZ made a believer out of me. My CPU Temps Dropped 2 Degrees by stripping AS off and putting on OCZ.

[Kunaak]

personally I love radioshack thermal paste.
costs $2 you get enough for 100 CPU's and as far as I am concerned theres nothing better for sub zero temps...

other then another obscure Thermal Paste thats impossible for me to find.

stars.... that stuff was great.
to me, worrying about 2 degrees is too insignifigant to worry about.
2 degrees isn't even 1C which isn't gonna do a thing for me...

unless I was running a prescott ;)

[ensabah6]

yes,
i bought it a couple of years ago, and i still have a tube full, so it seems wasteful for me to buy artic silver for $10, when i have enough radio shack paste for another 50+ cpu's