What are the ingredients in thermal paste? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: superUnknown
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 19, 2014, 11:22:35 pm
content: Thermal paste looks, feels and smells just like diaper rash cream. Co-incidence? Is the zinc oxide in diaper cream the same compound in thermal paste that conducts heat?

author: Phaedrus
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 19, 2014, 11:32:34 pm
content: Silicone grease.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone_greaseAt least for the majority of cheap pastes. Higher-end pastes will have proprietary formulas, including ceramic bases, metal particles, carbon powder, etc.

author: jeremy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 19, 2014, 11:33:18 pm
content: Depends, usually various forms of powderised silver and/or aluminium plus some silicone. The real nasty stuff has beryllium but it works amazingly. I wouldn't go rubbing this stuff on your skin!

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 19, 2014, 11:57:04 pm
content: Well, stuff like Arctic Silver contains metal, but the standard white stuff is some combination of ceramic powder, like zinc oxide (yes, the same), alumina and so on.I have a thing of Wakefield 120, let's see... the MSDS says exactly that: silicone oil and zinc oxide.Beryllium oxide would be amazing, but if the oil ever dried out...Think I've heard of diamond loaded stuff too (the highest thermal conductivity!), which isn't as expensive as it sounds; industrial diamonds are cheap.Tim

author: Phaedrus
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2014, 12:16:39 am
content: Diamond thermal paste:http://www.amazon.com/IC-Diamond-Carat-Thermal-Compound/dp/B0042IBAOGWe used it in the overclocking lab at EVGA in Taipei. If you're going to the trouble of using liquid nitrogen you might as well spend the extra few bucks for the expensive paste.In my home PC I use Shin Etsu Masscool something or other, which is ceramic, alumina, and some other crap. It works about as well as Arctic Silver, but doesn't require a curing period. For most PSU applications I just use the cheap stuff, unless we're talking >50W of heat...

author: Fsck
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2014, 01:41:10 am
content: for "high performance" pastes: silver, a ceramic with high conductivity or carbon allotrope, obviously they all need fillers.The "premiere" diamond paste is probably IC7, probably best in terms of lifetime + performance. I've been using it for 3-5 years on different rigs and it doesn't seem to have noticeably degraded.The new "in" is probably to use pyrolytic graphite polymer sheets. for extremely thin sheets, it's planar thermal conductivity (planar thermal conductivity decreases with increasing thickness) comes quite close to typical "generic" diamond (not specially grown with certain impurities), it's orthogonal thermal conductivity is, not so good, but probably still the best (or close to) of shape-conforming materials. IC7 is specified for T-conductivity of 4.5W/(m*K). Panasonic's PGS series have specified orthogonal thermal conductivity of 15W/(m*K) invariant of thickness.

author: robrenz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2014, 01:59:58 am
content: AFIK Tetrahedral boron nitride is the highest thermal conductivity of a non conductive non poisonous material other than diamond. I add this to silicone dielectric grease to the point it is difficult to mix and spread. Think very cold peanut butter consistency. I have not done any measurements but I have had good results using this mix.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2014, 02:52:38 am
content: +1 for boron nitride, I have Shin-Etsu high thermal conductivity thermal "pad" (not paste) that uses that substance, it specified at 7.3 W/m-K(ISO-22007-2), much higher than average thermal "paste".

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 20, 2014, 05:24:46 am
content: I'm half way through extensive Real World testing of several Thermal pads / pastes /methodolgies (had to have SOMEvalidity for buying the damn E4 :-) ), and so far these have blown everything out of the water.www.fujipoly.com/usa/products/sarcon-thermal-management-components/SARCON XR-m series 17.0watt/mkTrack within a few degrees of heatsink, where the "standard" silpad 400 remains at 25-35C above.Bought from FrozenCPU.com I'll be posting results once I'm done, some *Interesting* results.

author: Phaedrus
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2014, 06:52:42 pm
content: Funnily enough, in testing on CPUs some people have found that JIF creamy peanut butter is more effective at heat conduction than silicone/zinc oxide thermal grease.Only advantage of the silicone is that it goes bad in 2 years instead of 2 days

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2014, 07:05:20 pm
content: Toxic waste and toothpaste.

author: Greorge
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2014, 09:28:46 am
content: I cut few copper tubes with hacksaw (as my copper tube cutter gone missing) and I saved the cuttings.Does it mean that adding it to silicon grease I could make my own cheap and nasty thermal paste?Suppose I can make finer filings with finer tooth hacksaw or file and I can make aluminium cutting too if they could be better ingredient.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2014, 09:37:48 am
content: Diamond dust, not only is it highly thermally conductive but it will also lap the chip face and heat sink at the same time. All you need is an anvil, lump hammer and the wife's jewellery.

author: robrenz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2014, 11:09:20 am
content: Quote from: Greorge on March 21, 2014, 09:28:46 amA perfect gradient of particle sizes to achieve maximum packing density is part of getting high thermal conductivity

author: N2IXK
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2014, 04:51:45 pm
content: Vegemite and toothpaste will work about as well as most commercial heat transfer pastes, at least at first....http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2014, 05:14:00 pm
content: I have reconstituted dried out heatsink paste quite often with synthetic grease, and it works quite well. You often find the original application is so thick you can scrape it off, then mix with a match head sized blob and then apply this back to the clean heatsink and chip in a THIN layer, not the blob so thick it provided insulation. Often leads to a 20C drop in chip temperature, more so if you remove the thick layer of dust off the heatsink.Did not help the last motherboard, as the power connector pins supplying 3V3 to the motherboard had burned themselves black and turned the white plastic brown. Symptoms were longer boot times and really slow operation. That and the usual capacitor plague, and as it is an old Celeron running XP I declared it BER. New one is a Dell running Win7, and now the retraining begins.

author: superUnknown
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2014, 06:19:36 pm
content: Wow, thanks guys! I'm off to the shops to get some thermal paste. (I was hoping I could use my daughter's diaper cream)

author: N2IXK
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2014, 06:58:07 pm
content: Diaper creme is likely ZnO-based, but in a petroleum (petrolatum) carrier grease. Heatsink compounds use silicone grease, which handles high temps better without polymerizing/drying out.Cooling chips or soothing a baby's butt--is there anything that Zinc Oxide can't do?

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2014, 08:03:24 pm
content: Anybody used that famous Aussie product Inox to freshen up thermal paste?Food grade lubricant, but will it have the thermal properties?Seems to mix with the paste well IMO.

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2014, 10:46:37 pm
content: Quote from: N2IXKSHlT that was funny !! I'm hoping it was a real commercial once :-)

author: Richard Head
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2014, 08:36:30 am
content: Dow Corning 340. Buy a tube and have it for life.