There are so many great thermal pastes on the market from MX4 to IC Diamond, but what makes one so different from the other? Today I have the answers for you! I found a really interesting article that discusses one of the most famour thermal pastes to date, and this also being one that i use in my personal system, i just had to mention it! You can read more in depth about thisnd and metal thermal paste right here: http://www.arcticsilver.com/reviews/as5/pcsynapse/pcsynapse_reviews.php.htm?verify=14. Lets start off with the basics, if you are new to computers in general you might be wondering what is this thermal paste? Thermal paste is the interface between point A, a point of heat being generated, to point B, the heat sink, which acts as a dissipator for the heat. It is just the bridge for those 2 points, and it keeps your components from dying from overheating. Now a thermal paste can vary on its composition and structure, which affects how efficiently it transfers heat from said point A to point B. One that particularly caught my eye was a relatively old, yet still effective paste, AS5 (arctic silver 5) Which is a silver based thermal compound. It is made with 99.9% silver, along with aluminum oxide, zinc oxide, and boron nitride on a poly synthetic oil base. Metals themselves are great conductors, The silver, aluminum, and zinc are great conductors of heat but that is not the main takeaway, another reason why the heat conductivity is so great, is because of the shapes of the silver particle composition, so that it allows for maximum particle to particle contact after about 200 hours of "breaking in" period. The paste itself is a composition of various structures, both ionic and covalent and even organic, which affects the heat conductivity, this being a a metal based silver compound means that it has an ionic structures in it. The particles are packed so closely that they can more effectively transfer the heat energy more quickly and easily between one another from one end to another, these structures are what make such a thermal paste such as this such a good heat conductor for computer components, the electrons can more easily move between the cage structure and it is what makes the metals themselves such great conductors, of course this also introduces the fear of electrical shorts, because where its a great heat conductor it would also be a great electric conductor right? Yes and no, as stated earlier it is not all metal, it is all based on a poly synthetic oil base, and oil is so scarce when it comes to charged ions, which makes it in a word...a DULL conductor, but it is still stated that it does have the potential to conduct if it is allowed to make close enough contact with the micro circuits and transistors. So are metal based pastes worth it? Here is the bottom line, if you have enough experience and you know what you are doing, go to town, if you don't, stick with non-metal based carbon compounds. One question that i am very interested in knowing the answer to is, what do you think would make up an effective thermal compound?
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