PCA Forums

Hey Guys.. Not lookin' to kill anything.. But I was wondering if I can pick up some thermal grease at Lowes/HD to use for my heatsink? Is this a bad idea? *thinks it might be* I thought I saw something about this at one time being a good or bad idea? Thanx for your thoughts.. eGo

I didn't know you could get it at either place. You can get it at Radio Shack.

If either has it, I don't see the harm it getting it there...

I know lots of people would disagree with me, but I have used both Radio Shack and Arctic Silver and I couldn't tell any difference between the two.... My opinion is that it doesn't matter what brand as long as you put it on correctly...

A regular 99 cent tube of heatsink compound from Radio Shack works just fine.

You don't need Artic Silver unless you're into overclocking, or you've got ventilation issues (some of those mini LAN party cases for instance get rather hot).

Artic silver, depending on the situation, can shave up to 5 degrees off the temp compared to the regular stuff.

Any electronics place carries the regular stuff - it's used whenever you attach an electronic device (be it a transistor, chip or regulator) to a heatsink.

yup, i put rat shack grease on my computers that are not overclocked, works just fine- 1 tube is good for like 50-60 applications with the size of todays cores

I use to use that radio snack stuff for years and when others were using the more expensive stuff. Used it on 300a's/366's etc.. and it worked fine. Couldn't see any temp diff using the better goop.

Since using amd heaters err uh cpu's I do use arctic silver goop. I did do a test using some old radio snack stuff and the temp was around 4-6 degrees f higher than the artic stuff. Didn't test for long because I have so much arctic goop.


Best out now that I've tried is ceramique, from arctic silver. Like alumina, it is non conductive. Far easier to clean up than arctic silver 1, 2 or 3. It is very sticky, which appears to make it stay more on the actual cpu core.

And this stuff is still very cheap.

bestbuy sells some silver stuff if you have one of those near ya.

I must be missing out on something cause ALL the radio shacks by me suck. dont have squat as far as I am concerned.

Greg

Dude I can hook you up with some grease Saturday if you need it.

Thanx Bud! See ya then.