Introduction:

Since CPUs became hot running at extreme clock rates, they needed heatsinks. With imperfections to the heatsinks, the heat that was required to be transfered to the heatsink was not working at all without some kind of thermal grease. What thermal grease did was fill in the imperfections between the heatsink and the CPU. What Arctic Silver thought of was what if we improve the heat transfer between the CPU and the heatsink by including silver in the thermal paste, and with every generation of Arctic Silver, they included more and more silver, up to the point where now it contains 99.9% pure micronized silver. This allows tremendous heat transfer.

With the Arctic Silver 5, probably the best thermal compound in the market was mainly made for fan cooling. With fan cooling, a fan is usually placed on top of the heatsink where it tries to dissapetate the heat a little better than a heatsink without a fan. What fans also do is vibrate the heatsink, causing any thermal paste to move around and fill in the voids or gaps. In our case, where we used water cooling, there is almost no vibration. All there is to water cooling is water moving through the heatsink, collecting the heat then moving to the radiator, cooling down and moving back to the heatsink.

Installation:

Interestingly, after almost 1 and 1/2 years, when the Swiftech water cooled heatsink was removed, Arctic Silver 3 was still greasy. This might be normal, however not too sure. Thought this might say one thing about water cooling. Since it was still greasy, it was very easy to remove. Once removed, Arctic Silver 3 was applied with a new CPU and then 12 days later Arctic Silver 5 was applied without any problems. Remember, when applying only a thin layer is needed. Too much might cause the Arctic Silver to come out from the sides, and this material is still partially conductive.

Specifications:

Features:

• Contains 99.9% pure silver
• High-Density
• Controlled Triple-Phase Viscosity
• Not Electrically Conductive
• Absolute Stability
   

Testing:

As the thermal paste was applied on Day 1, with the MB (motherboard) temperatures at 27C (case temperature) the max clock that was achieved was 3066@3495Mhz with idle temperatures of 35/36C. As any overclocker would try to push the limits of their CPU, it could not clock any higher with stability. On Day 5, the same instability. On day 12, the Full temperatures dropped by another degree, however that was not enough for stability. Thought this might count for the decreased motherboard temperature, however it is not fully accountable for the Full burn temperatures, most of the decrease comes to the Idle temperatures when the motherboard temperature is lower.

For each of the days that was tested, we tried to simulate a similar room temperature. In the initial change to Arctic Silver 5, the temperatures dropped 1C immediately. As the days went on, it gradually dropped. Since we are using water cooling, 12 days are still not enough. There were reports that at least a month needed for the Arctic Silver to sink in.

Conclusion:

After applying Arctic Silver 5, it was indeed an improvement from Arctic Silver 3. Thought some people would use something less extreme that is not conductive at all, however, sometimes we have to make our choices and use the best if we want to get couple of those extra megahertz from the CPU. In addition, Arctic Silver 5 would probably be one of those great permanent purchases, where there is really no need to improve heat transfer anymore because the compound is already hitting the wall. With such great heat transfer, it makes Arctic Silver 5 a great purchase.