Speaking of board insulation methods

I was browsing through some other OCing sites las nite....

And ran into this little thread: Alternative to kneaded eraser... They're using "Bionic Putty" which we know here in the US as Silly Putty...


About Silly Putty:
Silly Putty is a dilatant compound, a silicone based polymer that is highly elastic, exhibits high bounce, can be easily molded, yet can hold it shape while at rest. It is non-toxic and non-irritating to the skin.
Silly Putty was invented by James Wright, a researcher at General Electric who was working on synthetic rubber substitutes. The first Silly Putty substance was made by mixing silicone oil with boric acid. While the invention didn't have a future as a synthetic rubber, it did make a great toy.

From the looks on the pictures over at Benchtec; I would say this stuff would be a breeze to apply... just drop a nice amount of it around the socket and let it flow into every nook and cranny...

Thoughts?

PS: On a "lighter" note... Please visit this section of the Silly Putty site and tell me what in the world were the people in charge of the site's design thinking about when they came up with that picture?

Wild concept! I may have to give that a shot...

It doesn't hold it's shape especially, but the flow is very slow.

Thing is you let it, or help it, flow until it's time to mount the pot and go cold... once the stuff is cold it won't flow at all so you're ok in that dept... I'm thinking this is definitely a "need to try at least once" kind of thing... Plus; I like playing with Silly Putty and toys like that... I remember spending hours of mindless fun with nothing but a tub of Slime back when I was a kid...

I'll put this on my list of "To-tries" along with conformalling the mobo.

i actually thought this idea up a while ago. looks like someone beat me to it! it just seems to me that it would crack really easy..

Wow, this is pretty awesome and interesting. It seems easier to apply almost, yet as cold.net said, I feel like it may crack easily?

seems like it might get into the pins easily. Something to really watch out for.

I was actually thinking about how this would work the other day by chance, since i all ways have some silly putty by my computer

If you make your limits of its flow at the start you can pretty much just set it there, walk away and you have a air tight surface in a few days, roughly, since any large bubbles that develop will work there way out. Sure beats the act out of slapping down eraser is small cracks.

moocow said:

seems like it might get into the pins easily. Something to really watch out for.

Click to expand...

Should only get into the pins if you let the level of it go that high at rest, think of it like a pool of water. if you fill the pool far enough that it overflows into it then yes, but if you dont your ok. Plus you can all ways extend the limits of the boundrys by increasing the height. So a small amount of Tape to act like a brick wall, and you should be fine.

it would work just perfectly like Dragon Skin. it is pretty cheap too! however, like i already said, it cracks at low temperatures like the ones seen using dry ice and ln2. i don't think it is a practical insulating method.. i may be wrong though

Hmm, definately a cool concept. I may have to get some for my first Mobo.

Yeah definitely gonna have to abuse some silly putty, and here I was looking for something that would make me feel like a kid today, SCORE!!!!

I don't know about the cracking part guys...

This picture is from that thread and according to the guy doing the testing it was after three hours of LN2.. Now aside from the crappy insulation he left between the putty and the bottom of the pot I see no issues at all with the putty.

look here. it looks to me like it actually would crack at ln2 temperatures. at dry ice temperatures it would more than likely start turning solid and expand therefore possibly damaging any components you stuffed it into.

someone should test temperature on silly putty though!

edit: looks like it would be good then!

cold.nut said:

it would work just perfectly like Dragon Skin. it is pretty cheap too! however, like i already said, it cracks at low temperatures like the ones seen using dry ice and ln2. i don't think it is a practical insulating method.. i may be wrong though

Click to expand...

Dragon skin sorta sucks imo. Dolk doesn't even use it anymore. It's a pain to use and you've gotta be all manner of careful with it to prevent from blowing stuff up because if it gets under something hot it WILL become conductive

playing with it on my UD3P right now.. from what i see it has a little residue leftover too. don't have any cpu to bench on the board or i would be willing to see how it works out!

Nice. Let us know how it turns out, would be nice to have something that is easy to cleanup with little/no residue.

New members should read this
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=653818&highlight=alternative

And know that Dolk was using Dragon Skin at the 1st Bench party and it killed at least one board. I think it seeped into the VRM's and then caught fire. Dolk probably remembers better. I imagine silly putty have similar issues.

Hmm kinda caught the tail end of this conversation.

I don't use Dragon anymore, since the Benching Party 1 event. The stuff was a giant double end sword. Here is why:

When using a Silicon based mesh (putty or dragon), it can completely "seal" in a spot to where no water or air can pass through. This eliminates condensation to the extreme. The problem though is that Silicon becomes brittle and hardens near -80 C or something like that. With that being said, the Silicon method is viable when using Dice, Cascade, Phase change, and chilled water. Actually it can be really good for those systems since its easy to put on, completely eliminates the need of other insulation, and does not leave a mess. What you should not do is use it on a board that will go under an LN2 pot.

When using dragon though, you have to be very, very, very careful, when you pour it on the board. You can technically allow the stuff to ooze onto everything and harden. The problem is that when you go to clean up certain areas (ie the Mosfets), you will have trouble removing the small parts of Dragon, where it seeped underneath the components and is hard to dig out. With the example of the gigabyte board in Texas, the dragon was poured onto the mosfets. Either we did not remove the dragon from the mosets, or it was a bad job removing, I'm not aware. Mosfets fried, board died.

With my board, same thing happened, but instead a small pocket of condensation was created underneath the dragon and on top of some of my mosfets. It created a corrosion problem on three of the mosfets. I had to manly repair each one, which was not fun.

In the end, I say no to these solutions. Stick with eraser, Neoprane, frost king, towels and rice.

Rice? last time I checked you didn't really need to over clock or over chill your food products. Can't taste stuff thats super cold or super hot :\

All joking aside, does rice work that well in these cases for moisture removal?I know it works well to prevent salt from turning into blocks. (little rice in the salt shaker ftw)