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Is Your Silver-based Thermal Paste Really Silver?
strider69666 writes "Over at Overclockers.com they have a review of several thermal compounds that claim to have 99% pure silver content. 'I decided to test Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3, OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound, and CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease. This test was not conducted to test performance, but rather to determine if these compounds have Silver as an ingredient.' Using a professionally mixed testing solution, they found that several brands do not, in fact, contain any silver at all! So, are you getting what you are paying for?"
Who cares who's selling what? The TRUE geek makes his own from a brick of silver.
In my day we had to make thermal paste by grinding it down with stones.
False advertising is a crime! SUE SUE SUE! Mod me down and shoot me already.
No, mine isn't. And by the way, despite the claims of the manufacturer, Soylent green is not 100% people. Quit believing advertising, and you will be just fine. Better yet, take up spectroscopy as a hobby. Chicks dig spectroscopes!
Who do all these people who are concerned about false labelling go to for enforcement?
This sig no verb.
This is not surprizing at all as silver is expensive. Oh wait; what the fuck?
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
http://www.ocztechnology.com/displaypage.php?name= recall
From the above site:
OCZ would like to take this time to address the recent article published at Overclockers.com, ( http://www.overclockers.com/articles938/ )which shows that OCZ Ultra 2 thermal compound has no silver content.
OCZ does not manufacture Ultra 2 thermal compound in house, it is provided by a foreign manufacturer with our specifications. Previous independent lab tests conducted at the request of OCZ have shown that the silver compound content in Ultra 2 is 25% by volume and 70% by weight.
In response to this article, OCZ has submitted another batch of Ultra 2 to a third party for extensive lab testing. This Independent lab report show's that the most recent batch of OCZ Ultra 2 indeed contains less than 1% silver by volume. While simultaneously we have received lab reports from an outside source indicating the silver content to be 30% by weight. This leads us to the conclusion that recent batch(s) of OCZ Ultra 2 from our supplier did not meet the agreed specifications.
We accept full responsibility for these problems and we will be seeking legal action against our supplier.
In order to help solve this problem we have contacted Arctic Silver Inc, and entered into a vendor agreement with them to supply OCZ thermal paste.
Beginning January 22nd 2004 we are issuing a full recall of any and all OCZ Ultra 2.
Any Customers who wish to return OCZ Ultra 2 thermal paste with an invoice will in exchange for their full or partially used tube(s) receive:
1- One (dependant on # of tubes returned) 3-gram OCZ thermal Compound (made by Arctic Silver Inc.) or one OCZ Dominator 2 Heatsink.
2- One OCZ EL DDR T-Shirt
3- One 10 dollar off rebate on any OCZ EL DDR Dual Channel Kit (at participating resellers)
Is silver so expensive that these compaines have no way of adding silver to the paste? What made them think nobody would ever put their pastes to the test?
IIRC, copper conducts heat better than silver... why not make a copper paste, surly it would be much cheaper to make. Or would the companies use copper-colored pigment and lie to us about the copper too?
When someone buys 'Silver' thermal paste, are they paying for silver, or for performance? I don't buy the platinum edition of a game and feel jipped because the CD held little to no platinum.
i can't get to the page, is it down already?
...compusa meant that it was 99% silver - the /color/.
thank you, thank you. i'll be here all night. tip your wait staff.
It's colored silver. doesn't mean it needs to CONTAIN silver. funny marketing loopholes eh?
need I say more?
These people have to have violated more than a few false advertising laws, and since the article says on the bottom that all tests have been verified with an independent testing agency, I say this is a fairly open and shut case.
So is it actual *SILVER* (S) or is it just silver-colored? Do the ingredients state that there is silver inside?
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
If you read the article, you quickly find out that 99% is a matter of counting nines -- some were barely 98%, if that at all.
Silver is a generic term used to describe anything metallic, if the paste looks silver it isn't all that deceptive to call it arctic silver, or slick silver etc. I never actually thought there was silver in any of them anyway.
Is silver toxic? I thought the tube that came with my athlon fan was complementary tootpaste!
several thermal compounds that claim to have 99% pure silver content
They are advertised as CONTAINING silver, it's not just silver color.
I paid for silver
But you dicks gave me copper
I kick your balls now
What's next, KFC saying their chicken is good for you? Oh wait...
--
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the 80's)
... and the author says it didn't. I think there are some typos lurking in that article, or maybe you just have to be there.
neilio
I want a free goddam coffee and an apple pie right now or I'll sue!
Yeah and remind me to sue crayola too for not including any real silver in their silver crayons, those damned cheapskates.
A Bugg
Now THAT'S how damage control should work. The company took full responsibility and is offering a generous compensation.
It is disturbing that they had not caught this earlier, but I think that they are more than making up for their shortcomings.
I wish more organizations worked like this. Good word of mouth goes a long way on the Internet - see New Egg's success as an example.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Pssst ... the Golden Arches of Mc Donalds are not really gold. But the hot coffee ...
Oh wait... there IS such a thing!
Typo in the url ocz's page, heres the good link http://www.ocztechnology.com/displaypage.php?name= recall
is not silver?
403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
You're telling me a site on overclocking has to cut off the user limit? Their servers aren't overclocked enough to handle it?
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
makes *his* from a brick of Tin. So suck it punk!
Was not first one posted
Mod up anyway!
Beginning January 22nd 2004 we are issuing a full recall of any and all OCZ Ultra 2.
Any Customers who wish to return OCZ Ultra 2 thermal paste with an invoice will in exchange for their full or partially used tube(s) receive:
1- One (dependant on # of tubes returned) 3-gram OCZ thermal Compound (made by Arctic Silver Inc.) or one OCZ Dominator 2 Heatsink.
2- One OCZ EL DDR T-Shirt
3- One 10 dollar off rebate on any OCZ EL DDR Dual Channel Kit (at participating resellers)
Sounds cool, but how many people will have saved a receipt?
This isn't too far fetched. They could be getting systematicly ripped-off by their suppliers too.
Just a little screw-up at the (prob. offshore) supplier, I'm sure that OCZtech will be checking ALL the future batches...at least for another week or so.
Now would be the best time to get a tube. This weeks batch will prob. be right on the spec.
Comp USA brand silver thermal grease is, indeed, marketed as having silver content. Not just silver coloring, but, explicitly, silver content. Take a look at this before they take it down: compusa.com Product Listing.
In addition, the author claims that similar claims were made on the label of OCZ paste. Judging by the reaction from the people at OCZ (or the people that claim to be OCZ) and his accuracy in the rest of the test, I have no reason to doubt him.
Please, think before you spout the tired, cynical rhetoric about shady advertisement.
Does anyone else notice that the two tests that showed positive have let the drop of test solution spread out? Does the fact that the two that tested negative have the solution beaded up indicate very little interaction between the two substances? Where's a chemist on this? It doesn't look like they're mixing...
"SILVER THERMAL PASTES - BUYERS BEWARE!"
Silversinksam - 1/21/04
I decided to test Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3, OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound, and CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease. This test was not conducted to test performance, but rather to determine if these compounds have Silver as an ingredient.
All Testing was done twice, once on a jeweler's acid free 'Black stone', and the test was repeated on paper. The testing solution was Nitric acid and Muriatic acid that was pre-mixed professionally.
The tests produced some very disturbing results:
OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver compound and the CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease has ZERO silver in it.
The testing solution stayed orange - if it had any silver in it, the acids would turn varying degrees of red, depending on the purity of the silver present. OCZ claims that OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver compound is, "Made with 99.9% pure micronized silver, Over 70% silver content by weight".
I cannot concur and my tests conclusively show that there is Zero micronized silver present, and Zero silver content by weight.
Arctic Silver 3 and Arctic Silver 5 were also tested and both produced a blood red color, indicating 90% - 100% purity of Silver in both Arctic Silver 3 and Arctic Silver 5. Arctic Silver's claim of, "Contains 99.9% pure silver" by my testing is accurate and of the compounds tested, only Arctic Silver products produced results showing that Silver is in fact present.
The tubes in the picture below from left to right, Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3, OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound and CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease.
In picture 3 below, from left to right is Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3 and OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound. The compounds were placed on the paper and the acid was place on the compound undisturbed. Notice how the acid drop placed on the OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound remains orange, indicating zero silver present:
When you go into a jewelry store and buy a sterling silver or a fine silver necklace, you expect the jewelry to be made of sterling or fine silver. The same should apply to silver thermal pastes - if the silver paste has no silver in it and the manufacturer says it does, that is misleading.
Based on my testing, I can not recommend OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound or CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease, as they are both misleading products with zero silver in them. If you want a product that actually has silver as an ingredient, Arctic Silver 3, Arctic Silver 5 or Arctic Silver Adhesive tested OK.
Ed Note: Silversinksam's conclusions have been verified by an independent testing laboratory - details will follow in Part 2 of this article.
Silversinksam
What? there's no gold in gold bond powder?
When I read the above post, the first thing into my head was high school chemistry class and trying to get silver to precipitate... Much to my dismay, the article writer has chosen the easy way out with some color changing liquid which tells you when it's reacting with silver.
I was looking forward to poking fun at his titration technique... I mean, it was hellish trying to get as much precipitate as "expected" in those godamn experiments.
The overclocking thing bewilders me. These overclockers only push there cpu's to the limit so they can see a performance gain in the latest version of Quake.
You can't overclock a cpu on a pc or a server that has any real use what-so-ever.
Imagine overclocking the cpu on you employers mail server, then it becomes unstable and corrupts half the data!
-Haxx
And to make up for not having the advertised amount of silver in their thermal compound, OCZ announced a recall.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I'm not an OCZ customer per say but I may be in the future. This is how customer support and customer satisfaction are supposed to work. Kudos to them.
Actually, silver is a better thermal conductor than copper or aluminum. IIRC, it goes:
(In Watts per meter per degree Kelvin)
Silver ~420 W/mK
Pure Copper ~400 W/mK)
Pure Aluminum ~240 W/mK)
If you REALLY wanted some fancy shit, try a diamond paste. Diamond is like 2000+ W/mK. Really good at transfering heat. (No, I don't know if anyone actually makes the stuff).
Oh, and just for reference, air is about 0.025 w/mK, and water is somewhere around 0.6ish.
So you could use a copper paste, but it wouldn't be quite as good as the Silver.
I read this yesterday morning when someone posted it on HardOCP's forums. Is Slashdot losing their touch? :-/
i d=717877
Link to post: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&thread
But so what? As long as it cools down your processor, does it much matter if it's made from silver or the bones on zombies?
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Rats, I used up my last mod points just moments ago!
Silver is the best conductor, but it tarnishes pretty easily, killing it's conductivity. That's why you don't see silver-plated connectors on premium audio cables, etc. Gold is the next best conductor, AFAIK, and doesn't tarnish.
I suppose you can get away with using silver in thermal paste because it's isolated from the air.
Well the article is offline, but my educated guess is that the offending products are made in China. Just go ahead and try to sue a Chinese company for false advertising... or copyright infringement for that matter, or better yet, product liability, when your power supply fails a month after you bought it, or when your DVD-RW catches fire. If the WTO and related bodies don't bring China's legal system into line, consumers will eventually figure out that today's China is not quite the same as the Taiwan of twenty years ago or the Japan of forty years ago, and they'll start paying attention to the "made in" labels and won't be willing to pay as much for Chinese-made products.
Heat sink goop is a terrible conductor of heat. It is actually a very good insulator of heat.
Here is a measure of the heat conductivity of some stuff (watts/in. degree C)
air - 0.00076
nylon - 0.00635
heat sink goop - 0.0168
brick - 0.0175
glass - 0.02
silver heat sink goop - 0.0282
alumina - 0.7
steel - 1.7
silicon - 2.5
brass - 3.05
aluminum - 5.5
gold - 7.4
copper - 10.0
silver - 10.6
diamond - 16.0
Note that any heat sink goop is a terrible conductor of heat. The only thing it is better than basically is air. Thus, heat sink goop is only to be used to fill microscopic voids between the heat sink and the CPU. If you actually have a layer of it between the heatsink and the CPU it will insulate the chip a LOT and make it overheat.
Thus, there is no reason to use a lot of heatsink goop, it isn't critical that you use good goop. It is VERY CRITICAL that you have good enough heatsink pressure that your heatsink and CPU come in direct contact, with as much as possible heat sink goop squeezed out. There shouldn't even be a visible film of it after heat sink removal, just small pockets in the imperfections on the chip.
Oh, all these figures are stolen from "Hot Air Rises and Heat Sinks: Everything You Know About Cooling Electronics is Wrong" by Tony Kordyban. The book, BTW is just okay. I don't really recommend it to the average person.
What's next, KFC saying their chicken is good for you?
dude, I hate to break it to you, but I don't think KFC's chicken is actually made out of chicken... kinda like "silver paste" being silver-colored, but made of somthing else
and no, it's not good for you
Dan says it works real good.
all you posters saying "whats the problem" are missing the point, people pay a premium for silver paste becuase it supposedly contains enough silver to provide better heat conductivity. it's marketed as such and really, infomation should be made avaiable as to the silver content.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Didja know that those silver candy balls used on cupcakes have real silver? Check the label next time you see a container of them. They don't seem to be legal anymore in CA, TX, CO, NJ, AZ, and FL. Darn, and so tasty!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
OCZ issued a recall of the paste http://www.ocztechnology.com/displaypage.php?name= recall
Just because YOU don't have a use for overclocking, doesn't mean its "useless" and "not for geeks". :(
Christ, I thought gamer-geeks and techy-geeks were supposed to be on eachothers sides. Wheres the love?
Oh, and FWIW, yes, I do have an overclocked computer, and it could handle mail all damn day if it had to.
You could try your local jeweller for the diamond paste (left over from cutting) but I imagine its a bit expensive. I just use these with silver paste. They keep my 1 gHz PIII's at 90 deg. F (~60 C.) no problem.
C|N>K
2 pack; 97% pure micronized silver
75-80% silver content by weight
(from CompUSA's website, regarding said silver compound)
Wouldn't it be funny if CompUSA responded with:
"Our product is advertised correctly. Before micronization, the silver that was used was rated at 97% percent pure. The silver was then put through our micronization process and added to a substrate to create our product compound."
When asked what substrate was used
"The substrate is a a type of aerogel."
Well that would explain why the compound is 70%-80% silver by weight!
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
http://silicon.wack.us/sdmirror/tpaste/ just in case it goes down
Natural-Selection Be
You're incorrect on that temperature, there, buddy. You're really running at about 140. Try some better paste (ceramique) and lap that heatsink, you're running too hot.
Many universities with mass spectrometers will run a sample through for $10 to $100. They'd probably be glad to give you a letter on university stationery with the elemental analysis. You can then lower the boom on the manufacturer of this snake oil.
How else are we supposed to protect our PC's from werewolves?!
I've always thought KFC's chicken did a pretty good job of looking like chicken. I do wonder how it would taste without all the flavours and spices, though. Probably not very good at all.
McDonalds chicken on the other hand is weird. There's bits in it. Bits of... stuff. That shit is not fit for human consumption.
does it much matter if it's made from silver or the bones on zombies?
Bones of zombies? I thought that was Powdered Milk
WTF?! I'm not a professional network admin. I'm still a geek though.
:(
Jesus, and I thought gamer geeks had a fetish about being "1337". Looks like the real inflated egos are over on the tech side.
Everybody insists they've cleaned up their act, but show me a boy and I'll tell you what man he'll grow up to be. OCZ started out as scammers and they've grown to be scammers - they're just better at hiding it. I can't wait until somebody does a similar test with their overpriced RAM and proves how reviewers were getting the good stuff while consumers were paying for the crap batches.
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
MOD parent up
It matters if you're dumb/enthusiastic enough to want special thermal compound for a degree or two of cooling, and you reckon silver content is what's going to give you more speed :-o
I take it that's a "no"?
~UP
Eat the Path.
Of course, any discussion of thermal grease should include those products that contain mercury which should be avoided at all costs. This as mentioned on page 139 of A+ Certification for Dummies, 2nd Ed. Mercury compounds can cause severe immune system misfuntion which can lead to any number of horrible degenerative conditions. You should not get it on your skin. As your computer heats up the stuff will evaporate and you will end up breathing it as well. The website www.amalgam.org details efforts to ban mercury amalgam dental fillings in this country, which btw, has already been done in most of Europe.
Silver thermal paste is preferred for a reason: The thermal conductivity of the chemical element silver.
If silver thermal paste is sold that does NOT contain silver, but some silver-colored goo with focus on the approximate color, then it will also be less thermally conductive. This will have severe effects on the paste's performance.
Short story, your proc will fry.
So yes, people ARE paying for silver, as in the element silver, for chemical reasons.
working in a local mom in pop type store some dude
came in wanting help getting his heatsink off.
Sure enough that baby was stuck tighter than a frogs ass. I asked "did you install this?" "yep! I
put it on with JB-WELD for a nice snug fit."
Besides, everyone knows that mail servers are only underclocked gamer PCs with tons of PS/2 ports. Don't betray your ignorance. I'll have you know that I AM a professional network admin, and I just upgraded to USB.
Isn't that an oxymoron? Like professional horse sewage shoveler.
That's really kinda hot.
For reference my Athlon 900@1007mhz with a copper Globalwin heatsink (forgot the model), arctic silver 5 and a ~3800RPM fan is at 46C under load, 10C above case temp.
It's also pretty quiet, blissfully silent compared to how it was with the horribly loud 7000RPM fan that shipped with the heatsink.
My bad on the temp conversion. However the BIOS reports 92 deg. F. Learning how to setup lm sensors...
C|N>K
KFC chicken isn't too bad as long as you get the original recipe (not the extra crispy greaseball version) and you eat ONLY the chicken (avoid the fries). The grease:protein ratio is fairly good. Too bad they discontinued their Tender Roast chicken -- that was great stuff and wasn't deep fried.
For McDonalds, their Crispy Chicken Deluxe is actually real chicken breast instead of the McChicken which is a chicken patty reassembled from the spare body parts of leftover chicken.
...grumble about it a bit or perhaps make a remark that borders on funny and then forget about it. Some go as far as to post on /.
Seriously, there are consumer laws and if you just type that (ok, so you're a geek, cut'n'paste it, then) to google...
I don't know about USA, but in my country there are laws against false advertising and even actual penalties should it occur. Trying to keep to the topic somewhat, though, I'm not sure I'd be worried about the silver content of a paste, but rather about the actual heat conductivity of it.
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
No, I failed the temp conversion. The BIOS reports 92deg. F
C|N>K
Yes, those are real 24kt gold flakes in there.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
it tastes like it's real silver to me
The quote comes from film "Soylent Green" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/ and not from the novel "Timemachine" by HG Wells (or film by the same name).
But the fact is your paying for a misleading product, imagine going out and buying your girlfriend a diamond and paying say 500 dollars but actually you just bought a 5 dollar cubic zirconia. Sure it looks the same to the human eye, hell maybe even better (it does the job). That is where the problem lies not in it doing the job.
I mean, c'mon people! Use some logic!
For best results, put heatsinks on the fans to cool the air more. You might want to point a fan at the fan, too. Actually, if you did this enough times, you could reach absolute zero or even absolute -10.
This isn't rocket smarts, guys.
Ah, the Aquabats. :)
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Could the offenders be sued/fined for false advertising?
I don't care what element they are made out of; all I care about is that they work. If I was buying jewelry I might feel differently, but thermal paste is something you apply once and never see again. All that should matter is its performance. Then again, this could be considered false advertising, which would bother some people. But as long as it does its job, I don't care.
Also, IANAMS (I am not a materials scientist), but the liquid test agents they're using may not work if the silver is in certain molecular compounds. The best way to examine these thermal pastes would be with a scanning electron microscope. I had the priledge of using one at NIST (National Institute for Standards in Technology located in Maryland), and we examined a ring and used some sort of technique to determine that the band of the ring had 75% atomic numbers of 79 and 25% atomic numbers of 29 and the jewel of the ring had 100% atomic number of 6. (We saw all of these as relative heights in a graph of some sort of spectrum). Needless to say, the ring was 18 carat Gold (24 carat = 100%) and the diamond was real. This immensely relieved the husband, whose wife's ring had been the one examined.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Where was their inward goods QA? If they do not have a program of monitoring based on sampling then they were hardly operating to the usual expected quality standards.
What?
I can barely hear you over the roar of my MDD G4!
By the way, did you know that the
Original Girl Scout Cookies aren't made from real Girl Scouts?
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
NO CARRIER
ISO 9000 is essentially about establishing and following quality procedures. Similar to security, it is perfectly valid when there is none, as long as the fact is documented. The threst that one has when dealing with a certified supplier is that the certificate may be revoked and there are procedures for doing so.
Is it whitish?
Like saying gold christmas wrapping paper should be pure gold.
Unless they state it contains Silver Ag, then they will have a problem.
I needed some sticks of RAM, shopped around some, ordered from New Egg. Jumped through the hoops of "registering" an account just to place a single order. No special rush delivery or anything.
A few days later, the RAM arrives.
A day and a half after that, New Egg sends me an email telling me that the RAM has been shipped and will arrive soon.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
read financialsense.com and silver-investor.com
Global supplies are running out, miners arent mining much of it, and the evil govt sold all it ever had.
Expect silver to SURGE to 5x to 100x its price with in 2-3years and gold too. Then the US$ will fall like a stone.
READ now.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
If you REALLY wanted some fancy shit, try a diamond paste. Diamond is like 2000+ W/mK. Really good at transfering heat. (No, I don't know if anyone actually makes the stuff).
A quick Google search showed that it may actually be in use, but only in very high-end stuff, as in supercomputers, and even then only as sheets, not paste. If someone is looking to start a business, pricing out some bulk diamond dust and doing some tests might be in order. Find out who the people that make diamond-tipped saws and the like buy from.
OCZ would like to take this time to spin doctor a recent article published at Overclockers.com, which shows that OCZ Ultra 2 thermal compound has no silver content.
It is not really OCZ's fault, we don't actually make the stuff. OCZ is a victum just like you! Someone in China did it and we couldn't have possibly known because we outsourced our quality control as well. This required us to trust a single independent lab test to be representive of the quality of all batches of OCZ Ultra 2 thermal compound.
Now that we have been caught with our pants down, we have submitted a second batch to our outsourced quality control and confirmed that it is all China's fault. But we would like to point out that the compound did contain 30% silver by weight. We have reached the conclusion that this recent batch (actually, it might be multiple batchs but we can't afford to test each one to be sure) did not meet with the OCZ unenforced specifications.
Instead of giving your money back, we will define the steps below as "accepting full responsiblity" and would like to point out that we are taking legal action since it really is China's fault.
Beginning today we are issuing an incomplette recall of all full or partially used OCZ Ultra 2 (if you still have an empty OCZ Ultra 2 then your S.O.L. and get nothing).
1) The tube which now sells for $9 on NewEgg (and we would like to point out that the Tech Zone rated as cooling 2 degrees C below Arctic Silver) can be exchanged for Arctic Silver which you could have just bought for $7 -OR- you can get a OCZ heat sink that we need to get rid of anyways since it is discontinued!
But wait... there is more...
2) A one-size-fits-all T-shirt featuring the OCZ logo so you can be a walking advertizement for OCZ until it falls apart the third time you wash it. The fact that there is not the cotten/polyester blend we specified can not be OCZ's fault because after all... OCZ does not have it's own quality assurence and in the end everything is China's fault.
Oh... but wait... there is even more...
3) $10 off another of our products which also comes complette with no quality assurence!
Thank you for getting scre... doing business with OCZ. Remember, if it is not OCZ technology then you might actually be getting what you payed for.
From the Slashdot article:
Over at Overclockers.com they have a review of several thermal compounds that claim to have 99% pure silver content.
The claim is that the silver content is 70% by weight, and that the silver used is 99.9% pure. Not that the compounds have 99% silver content,
If you want 99% silver on top of your CPU, try spreading some silverware on top of it.
Are you using genuine Microsoft(R) Windows(R)?
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
As others have pointed out, silver is the best conductor, followed by copper, gold, and aluminum.
This has ramifications in (of all places) the kitchen, where for serious cooking, heat conduction is of the essence. It is, for example, why copper cookware is considered a premium item, and why decent-quality stainless pots and pans have aluminum cores. Stainless steel, by comparison, has a pathetic thermal conductivity, about 5% that of copper. (This is why cheap stainless cookware is, well, cheap.)
Anyway, I thought the comparison was interesting. (Betcha didn't realize your kitchen was full of heatsinks!) Hmm, I wonder if extra virgin olive oil would make a good thermal paste...
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
We Use Boogers
*I used to be quite irreverent and ignorant. I am probably much smarter now. I seem to realize this every 45 days or so.
Only if it's a trademark.
I live in Orlando, FL and attend UCF and am about to be the first homeless college student. If anyone wants to give me a job email me kriserickson2003@hotmail.com
Actually, diamonds are dirt cheap. Nice ones for your girlfriend are expensive because they're big and clean.
True now, but not for long. Apollo Diamond has received U.S. patents on its method of growing nearly-perfect cultured diamond crystals through vapor deposition. Competition with the De Beers cartel should drive prices down until the patent runs out in under 20 years, when the bottom will truly fall out of the diamond market.
MOD THIS UP
um... tastes like lead, but says it's just full o' antimony... huh?
Ach und ach noch ein Mal!
Insert `fortune -o` here
George Peppard being dead, and BA with the Cancer, not alot of other options.
99% or only 70%?
We have ways of testing, as you can plainly see.
I fried my cpu and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
Quit believing advertising, and you will be just fine
"Contains 90% silver" is a simple and testable claim, and clearly not just ad-speak. There are laws against outright lies on the box of any product in most countries. This is a good thing.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
...the test didn't show any silver, because the metal parts were surrounded with polymer stuff, put there to prevent any conductivity, as OCZ claims.
Too much compound will also actually insulate the chip rather than cool it
Good advice. This may be stating the obvious, but the perfect thermal junction between a chip and a heatsink is NOTHING, i.e. both of them perfectly flat, with every single atom touching. In the real world, surfaces have flaws and air gets in between. Air is a very poor conductor of heat. So we have thermal compound, which is beter than air, and more malleable than the two surfaces could be.
Don't use much of the stuff AT ALL. When you squeeze the two surfaces together, you just want a thin film of compound fillling in the areas where the two surfaces don't touch. If it squishes out the sides, you used too much.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The problem with diamond is that the heat transmission is nealy 100% done by phonons, so if you have a paste of very little crystals, is would DRAMATICALLY limit the cunductivity.
:)
But in the age of CVD Diamons, i dont think we have to wait too long until some high end chips will have diamond heatspreaders.
Imagine:Heatspreaders that actually LOWER the thermal resistance of the cooling solution, plus it would take more than a geeks might to chip one of those things, for sure
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
After opening an iMac Apple Computer closing the hemisphere shaped iMac case
requires removal of the thermal paste and a reapplication of new thermal paste.
It is another deterrent for home computer users.
... not a metallic element they are refering to? It looks "silver."
...
... )
You know, uh, like, uh "orange" paint isn't really made from oranges, it's just that color
Yeah! that's it!
(And if you believe that
--
Tomas
Knowing a bit about chemistry i have to say, that it is quite possible that the testing just went wrong. For the testing liquid to work, it is necessary that a littlebit of silver is solved. As the liquid is on a watery basis und the silver is surounded by some kind of grease, they don't mix and no silver is solved so the test couldn't possibly work. Some concentrated nitric acid should solve the problem and the thermal paste as well.
And diamond made of pure C-12 is about 3500 W/mK. link (full article requires subscription). Natural diamond has only about 1% of C-13 but these isotopic impurities result in phonon scattering which slows down the heat transfer. At 0.1% C-13 concentration it is already about 3000 W/mK and these diamonds can be made albeit they are quite expensive.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
Trust silver-investor.com to give you the inside information about silver's coming boom!
Mmm-hmm! I certainly will!
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
"No, you're not getting your money back. Be happy anyways."
that the Idaho potatoes are not from Idaho! (Idaho is the variety, not necessarily the source.)
Prior to this, it was the memory they sold. They were busted & disgusted on oc'ing boards. They came back claiming they were under new management or something and out to turn a new leaf, yada, yada. This sounds like a repeat. BTW, the price of silver has been sky rocketing lately because of the wonderful job Bush Co has done with th the economy. People are stocking up on it expecting the dollar to tank more than it already has. The dollar is being propped up as best they can but expect that to go away after the election. Crash, crash, crash.
Actually chipping diamonds is extremely easy, diamonds are hard which normally implies brittle. This is true of diamonds as it is of most materials. For instance I have known more than one woman who has chipped a diamond engagement ring while working in a kitchen with marble countertops.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Unless you're increasing the surface area, there won't be much improvement.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Shouldn't this be referred to the FTC so they can stop the sale, possibly recall this, and fine the manufacturers? What about stopping the importation of known fradulent products at Customs? I'm sick and tired of obviously fradulent schemes, products, services and ads (even on network TV) no getting pulled and acted on in a reasonable amount of time. The damn Nigerian 4-1-9 scammers operate w/ impuinity and these home loan re-fi , title/mortagage insurance scammers are operating boiler-rooms all over the place. Spam is also at least 30% scams. The FTC, FBI, and DHS are not properly staffed nor have resources to fight all this crap, how the hell are we going to fight terrorism? What the hell is wrong w/ this country!?!?!
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Who cares if it contains silver or not. Maybe they're using gold or something better instead. The purpose of a heat sink is to .. radiate heat - not to look good on your wrist.
Eat at Joe's.
Stan Jones, a libertarian candidate turned a blueish tinge from taking that stuff: Click here for a picture of the guy.
it's the thermoconductivity that counts right?
silver has jolly good conductivity.
better than gold if i remember correctly.
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
Who cares if it contains silver or not.
People care about it because if something claims to be 99% silver then it should damn well have some silver in it. Otherwise it is false advertising which is illegal.
The purpose of a heat sink is to .. radiate heat - not to look good on your wrist.
Which is exactly why you want it to contain silver, silver is one of the best conducters of heat there is. And you want it to conduct heat, not radiate it, the heatsink is to radiate the heat, the thermal transfer compound is just there to transfer the heat from the core to the heatsink.
(not America) stuff like that actually matters.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Silver is used because it has the highest thermal conductivity of any metal at 417 W/(mK). However, since its too expensive to use as a heat sink, its just used in the putty between.
Copper is next after Silver in thermal conductivity at 395 W/(mK) and thats why you see it in high quality heat sinks. Aluminum, the metal used in most heat sinks, has a thermal conductivity of 217 W/(mK) which as you can see is significantly less than silver or copper.
Silver also has the lowest heat capacity of the metals decribed here, meaning it won't hold very much heat at the processor core, but will transmit that heat to the heat sink the fastest of any metal.
Eat a Chicken, You know you want to.
Why wouldn't you want copper?
Copper is much cheaper.
Silver only conducts 10% better then copper.
Plus making sure you have a good contact by itself will do a lot just by itself.
IF the ingredients list silver, and the ads say "silver", it MUST have silver in it, and as much as specified. This can be reported to the state's consumer affairs agency and/or the FTC for followup.
However, merely using the word "silver" in the name is not always fraud ...
...of using a "professionally mixed testing solution"? All you need to do is get Yukon Cornelius to test it out.
Are Your Girl Scout Cookies Really Made From Girl Scouts?
They should run them at a safe, drinkable temperature.
It's damage control people.
They knew.
They just didn't care.
Now that they are caught they are passing the buck.
Think about what they are offering: If you managed to save the receipt they will replace your current product.
And you get a T-shirt that is specifically designed to be a give-away.
And you get a coupon to buy more products.
If you are honestly accepting their word that they were poor abused victims in this whole scam, then you are gullible.
How much silver does centrum silver have? My guess is that, while misleading, it is just a marketing brand name, or "product level." Like "Gold mastercard" How much gold is in that?
It's only misleading because some other brands called silver actually contain silver
More music, fewer hits
In my day all we had was this damn turtle.
You had a turtle? We plunged forever into the nothingness of pure void. Uphill. Both ways.
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
My Titanium and Platinum edition software isn't really made out of Titanium or Platinum, either. What a gyp. I thought the CDs would be made out of superior metals, and here they're just the same old standard foil you get with any other commercially pressed CD. Bleaugh.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Great, tasty chocolate drink, if you have an old-style diner or deli around.
No egg, no cream.
What intrigues me about the whole matter is that he suddenly decides to do the test NOW, and there's conveniently another, independent lab waiting to verify the results. Just troubling is all.
One of the 187.
Why worry about what the maker really means about silver content when the maker is a complete liar? If they are lying about the content of thier compound, do you believe their performance claims? It's likely that the brands that fail to contain no silver at all have anything shoved into them willy nilly depending on what silver looking thing is cheapest and performance is variably dismal. Published tests of those brands should be disregarded because what you buy is probably not what was tested.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well, several hospilizations later, at least I know why my super soaker filled with 'silver' thermal paste was having no effect upon the local lycanthropes. Damn you, false advertisers.
Man, this is nothing new. You can find that kind of things in at least 10% of products in various areas. Companies learned that making sience out of everything is going to confuse and impress regular customer so they are hitting it even harder. Now we have "space technology" in every freakin' kitchen knife and spoon... C'mon! If somebody really want to nail this down, he could find at least 234 fakes in his own kitchen!!!
Sinisa
OK. 'Several' is *5*. He tested *4* (which corresponds to 'Some') compounds, and found that *2* (generally referred to as a 'Couple') of them made false claims about their silver content.
Yes, 3 is a 'Few.' No, we can't count past 5.
Geez! Get it right!
Well, you must be glad that you swallowed silver thermal compound and not older thermal compounds!
AFAIK, old thermal compounds consist mainly of beryllium oxide mixed with silicon to get a grease.
And beryllium oxide is *REALLY* nasty stuff. Look it up on google. This is a carcinogen, inhaling even small kills you by doing heavy damage to your lungs etc. pp.
I see this as being the issue with the Silver as well. Though it seems in some cases theyy couldn't find any, though maybe the microgram of 99.99% pure silver that they added to it was to minut to detect?
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
I recall in some of my woodworking catalogs a diamond paste for giving a final mirror finish when sharpening blades. A google with "diamond woodworking sharpening paste" came up with a generous list. Maybe soem overclocker out there may want to get out his chemistry set and make their own thermal gel?
If you eat a little of it, it will look like all sorts of colors.
--- Ban humanity.
looks to me that would trigger off a "you bastard, you bought me a cheap ring!" fight, as opposed to a "wow! diamonds are brittle, this is an interesting scientific demonstration" kind of thing.
Lots of times you can use a credit card statement, or a copy of one, as a receipt.
c-hack.com |
Have all been Excellent!
On my 2500 Barton i noticed a 7 celsius drop when overclocked to 3500+ish On my friends Pentium 4 2.4c oc'd to 3.4ghz, he noticed a 10 degree drop (Celsius)!!!
As we all know by now, Silver is the highest conductive material thats reasonably priced(isnt it od that human culture chose materials to be considered "precious" that would someday be in high demand by the computer industry?),But do you know WHY Arctic silver is so good? Because its micronized, The bits of silver are broken down to microscopic size, so that they fill ALL the spaces (even microscopic!) between the heatsink,and the processor.Which brings us to another point: Sand down those heatsinks with very fine grit sand paper.
AS5 is also a Phase change material,meaning that the paste goes thru a physical change over the first 200 hours of "burn in". You will notice the difference as your cpu temps drop constantly.
Now only if we could get those cheap man made diamonds micronized into a paste..
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
The rated speed of a processor is just the one at which the manufacturer decided he could sell it with reliability that was acceptable in terms of the price and return rate, in systems with typical cooling. Your acceptable reliability and environment might be different.
The only sense in which the rated maximum is unique is that it's the one where you can get your money back if it fails, and that's not much of a comfort if your critical server fails.
For really important applications, where failure would be a disaster, underclocking may be the right thing to do.
Toll Free: (800) 390-1119
Yeah, but is it also Troll Free?
"It is disturbing that they had not caught this earlier"
Caught?
They did this on purpose. They were busted, and now they're doing damange control.
There are always people who think companies are naive and just don't know. Please. this was a cost savings measure for the company.
They'll put out a few "expensive" batches, and in 3 months, they'll be using the "standard" batch which looks silver, but isn't.
You're such a sucker.
Chicks dig the size of your spectroscope alright.
"Hell, I don't buy the stuff, but if I did, I'd switch to theirs on the basis of this response alone."
Riiiiight.
If you save your receipt (ha ha ha ha ha), we'll send you a free t-shirt (Yeah...I want an OCZ t-shirt. ha ha ha ha ha ), and we promise it wasn't our fault (nudge nudge, wink wink).
No wonder scams work. People like you *want* to ignore the truth.
A silver brick.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
People care about it because if something claims to be 99% silver then it should damn well have some silver in it. Otherwise it is false advertising which is illegal.
Are you sure they claim to have 99% silver, or is it 99% silver compounds? For example, silver nitrate is commonly used to make mirrors. It is cheap. It is also liquid, which could be combined with a thickening agent to make thermal grease. So I highly doubt we're talking about pure solid silver here.
bp
A while back, some people went into the jewelry departments of large discount stores (read: Wal-Mart) with a magnet, and found that many of the 'silver' chains and stuff were magnetic. This called into question whether the items were really silver or not. A discussion about this can be found here.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
If you look the product up on the OCZ Technology website now their thermal paste is under recall. Also in the description of the product it does not mention silver at all. Looks like they have done some quick editing and stopped selling the product. Probably grinding up some of wives jewelry as I type
"Made with 99.9% pure micronized silver"
The half ounce of micronized silver they added to the 4000 gallon batch of silver colored grease was 99.9% pure.
Much in the same way that Made with real fruit juices doesn't gaurentee there's any reasonable ammount of fruit juices in it. Marketing at it's worst.
Your $20 tube of arctic silver sub zero uber thermal compound is overkill in the first place. Toothpaste'll work just as well, if not better, in a pinch. Check it out here.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Just to be fair, does the test also work if the silver is not silver metal? What if the "silver" in the compound is not in fact silver metal, but a silver salt. Does the testing solutions react to a silver salt as well as a silver metal?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the thermal compounds makers but I do wonder how accurate the acid test is.
In many cases companies report a more easily understood term rather than give the entire chemical name. How many folks remember the joke mail that went around years ago asking people to call or write their senators because of the high amount of di-hydrogen mono-oxide that was being allowed to pollute our drinking water.
As for the compounds, if you say it has silver salt in it, would you be more or less willing to pay a higher price than you would if you were told it has 99.99% real silver in it?
Its all in how you look at it.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
dan's data did some testing of various thermal compounds on the market, and threw in vegemite and toothpaste as a control. they all finished within the margin of error of the testing aparatus.
:)
read the article here: http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm
after reading this i just have to laugh at all the people posting here (and elsewhere) about how the super expensive paste they bought brought their cpu temperature down 10 degrees or more. if that's actually true, they installed the first product they used wrong. or they could have saved the money and used toothpaste
That link shows no such "recall" text, and looking around on the site doesn't indicate anything like the above has ever been present.
Why don't Intel etc. sell their CPUs with an integrated (same block of ceramic or whatever) heatsink instead of in a flat square housing that they know is going to need a heatsink?
Diamond has a thermal conductivity between 1000 and 2600 W/m^-1/K^-1
i bet diamond paste is going to be the next big thing.
using the aluminum is essentially no better than using nothing at all. The aluminum foil won't "squish" into the cracks well, unless you apply an ungodly, chip-cracking amount of pressure. You would be better off with a foil-centered thermal pad (best of both worlds, and not messy like grease)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Which is exactly why you want [the thermal transfer compound] to contain silver, silver is one of the best conducters of heat there is.
Have you checked out Dan's Data on thermal greases? He does a very nice comparison between Artic Silver 3, Cooler Master PTK-001 and HTK-001, Nanotherm "Ice" and "Blue", and... Toothpaste and Vegimite. While Dan may be quite mad, even for an Aussie, there is definitely method to his madness. After measuring the effects on cooling with his usual methods... the difference amounts to diddly-squat. And yes, that includes the difference between Artic Silver 3 and Toothpaste. (Actually, toothpaste was marginally superior.)
So, yeah, there may not be much point to getting too upset if you've gotten thus screwed-- it probably won't make jack-all difference in your system.
On the other hand, it is definitely immoral and almost certainly illegal to claiming "99.9% silver content" when you mean "99.9% silver free". While it was probably a harmless scam (and probably saved this disreputable company some chump change in manufacturing their overpriced goop), whatever Three-Letter-Agency has jurisdiction should probably come down on these folk like a ton of old hard drives on the principle of the matter.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
One thing to remember is that your outsourcing vendor does not share your business goals. They are there to make a profit NOT satisfy your customers. but this is just another example
Remember the capacitor problems with counterfeit electrolyte this one bit many major electronic vendors.
Another one to remember was ValuJet where they outsourced maintenance and cargo handling that one killed people
At least here the vendor and customers ONLY got ripped off no people killed or fires started.
Is it? Perhaps, at an official lab where someone has the right certification to write you up a formal report -- one that could stand up in a court of law.
But the fine article describes the OC people borrowing some equipment from their local jewelers. How expensive would it be for OCZ to take a couple of tubes over to the local jewelers every so often, and ask him or her to do an informal test?
GE makes a lot of the stuff used for that, there was an article about making diamonds on slashdot awhile ago, you can find info about it there
Aluminum wiring is actually illegal for a lot of stuff these days, and caused a lot of nasty fires back in the day.
In addition heavy metals are toxic waste. Here is a web-page devoted to Argyria -- the medical term for silver poisoning. What the heck are you doing throwing something out that is both toxic and valuable?
I happen to have a Pentuim II 450 development sample CPU. That means no multiplier lock. It's been running at 500mhz since 1998 without any problems. It's probably been powered off for a total of about 6 months in this time. I'm about to put it in a new colocation facility, (technically) overclocked to 500mhz, and I fully expect it run stable, as it has. For years.
They meant silver like.. the color.
Tuesday's comment about Girl Scout Cookies:
"Are they made from real Girl Scouts?"
Overhead at JPL when engineers realized they used OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound on Spirit.
Anybody want a peanut?
Actually, Mcdonalds has recently been running ads indicating that NOW their nuggets are made with REAL CHICKEN, which has me wondering what was in them before.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I made my first purchase from them with a brand new email account, and within 2 hours I had gotten spam at that address. The timing was suspicious, so I sent an email to their customer service and complained.
They apologized and sent me some goodies as well. The kicker is that it wasn't their fault, but a spammer with a dictionary attack (got the identical spam at another addr -- with headers showing the dictionary attack this time). I emailed them back, apologized in my turn, and thanked them.
I am a happy NewEgg customer, and have no compunctions about recommending them to anyone at all.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
What the heck is going on here? An AC actually using an apostrophe correctly? Has Hell frozen over? Has Microsoft embraced Linux? Has SCO dismissed their suit? Has Timothy renounced dupes?
Good heavens, much more of this and we'll start expecting proper grammar and spelling in all the comments...why, maybe even from the
Who cares if it contains silver or not. Maybe they're using gold or something better instead. The purpose of a heat sink is to .. radiate heat - not to look good on your wrist.
After you buy it you can use it for whatever you want. The fact is, silver is expensive. If you pay for silver you should get silver. If they are using something else, they should put it on the label.
Anyone ever heard of false advertising? I'm going to go buy some fro CompUSA right now, then sue the hell out of 'em. Hopefully no one else will get the same idea, otherwise it'll become a class action suit and instead of pocketing millions, I'll have to share it with everyone else and I'll probably get about $0.99
As I understand it, for a thermal coumpound you want a good thermal conductor but a electrical isolator. As the thermal paste is well a paste, it will move some dry hard as a rock but if the heat sink will be place and remove and replaced a paste is desirable, if it wipes off it may cause a short somewhere on the motherboard. So the question is do you really want silver? or what form is the silver contained in the paste? A silver soldered heatsink attached to the CPU at the factory would be the best solution.
At least there's an "attempt," unlike *nt*l and the P*nt**m float point fiasco.
a. It's not really a problem, only effects a small percentage of people.
b. Submit your justification for demanding the replacement processor, and we'll... 'think' about it.
c. Oh, fsck it, just send it back and we'll send you another one, fscker.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Best for a solid is diamond. Make a paste with diamond dust, let the heatsink and CPU case deform around the particles. Graphite might work also, I don't know if the adsorbed gasses and different structure make a difference.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
It seems possible that the silver in some of the thermal compounds might be "shielded" from the test solution by the other goop present. It might be better (if you cared that much) to try to isolate the silver particles before testing for their presence.
We were discussing this very thing around the house the other day and we decided that Grape Nuts are called this because of two factors:
1) Grape Nuts greatly resemble "grape shot", so the "grape" is from "little clusters of things designed to break apart and maximize damage to persons and properties."
2) To some people everything that is crunchy and brown and edible must be a nut. These are the same people who believe in irrational concepts like "white supremacy" and "compassionate conservatisim" so it doesn't have to make sense.
3) The first name, "wheat rocks", not to be confused with the assertion that "wheat ROCKS!" (which didn't exist as a cultural paradigm when these little groat clusters first hit the market, and which tends to rile the Barly Growers of America) was discarded as "too accurate to be marketable"...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Interestingly (at least to me) I just read a magazine article on sharpening plane irons and chisels, and one method is to use diamond paste on a flat, hard piece of maple. A quick search on google shows that it can be purchased pretty easily, for example here.
I have no idea whether this would be appropriate for use as heatsink compound, but maybe someone at overclockers.com or elsewhere sees this and tries it out.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
"Girl Scout cookies aren't made from real girl scouts either."
Not even the Chocolate-coated Soylent Green Delites?
You people make it sound like 99% is some kind of measurement... web site hosts destroyed that theory with their uptime claims.
After their debacle of retesting memory in their garage (apparently in the dead of winter) and remarking it at overclocked speeds, who in their right mind trusts anything coming out of OCZ? I wouldn't buy toilet paper from those guys.
<rant>
Because slashdotters just want to feel informed, which is considerably easier than actually being informed.
For the rest of you (not the parent), wait until a /. story comes along that you actually know something about, like a posting about a company you've worked for or some controversy surrounding an OSS project to which you've contributed. You'll be astonished at how utterly brainless 90% of the postings are WRT the topic. Mindless speculation and fabrication. It follows that 90% of all ./ postings are more-or-less worthless. They may seem informed and insightful, but that is often simply because they make sense and you (the reader) don't know too much about the topic.
I love slashdot and I love reading the postings. I don't know much about many of the topics here, and I still post on some of them ;-) But it's always good to remember that you should turn up the bullshit meter when your information source is any random population of netizens.
</rant>
/braced for "Troll" modding...
I have had the idea to try (though I haven't had the time yet) to make a copper-oxide solar cell, but instead of using the typical salt-water electrodes, I was thinking about silvering the backside, and then creating on the frontside using silver paste a grid of lines to act as the other electrode.
Would this even work? Is there something else I should try (ideally, if there was a way to homebrew deposit a clear electrode on the front - could silver nitrate be used, or something similar)? Basically, copper oxide cells are easy and cheap to make, but the saltwater electrodes make them impractical to use for anything other than experiments...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Silver also has good electrical conductivity properties as well as heat conductive. Its about 5% better than copper which why some high end speakers use it.
I wasn't ment to use the WHOLE tube???!!!
I just stopped by to thank you people for linking to my article, I have read many of the replies here. It's impossible to answer all the questions presented in all the replies, so I will just provide some additional information. Although my article was initially conducted using a topical test, it should be noted that OCZ Ultra II Silver Premium Compound, and Compusa's Silver Grease was also sent to a Laboratory at my expense to validate my initial results which will be in a Part 2 Article.( I have the lab reports and only posted my article AFTER my findings were confirmed by hard science) The Lab report was done with spectroscopy testing (XPS) combined with Elliptical X-Ray Spot testing with 'burn off'. Then Mortar and Pestle samples were taken. OCZ Ultra II Silver Thermal Compound and Compusa's Silver Paste are composed of Aluminum Oxide in a Polymeric binder of dimethyl Siloxane (silicone) and it contains an organic Silver coloring to give it a silver 'appearance'. There were traces of hydrocarbons and traces of Copper and Zinc. (Almost all aluminum will have traces of copper and zinc) The lab report also states that OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver compound AND Compusa's silver grease were most likely made by the same manufacturer and their chemical makeup was the same . That I found interesting -The Lab reports and my topical test clearly and unequivocally showed there is ZERO silver(Ag) in either- So very soon (Monday) I will release part 2. Here's what OCZ and Compusa's websites states and I disagreed and both these Sites are/were wrong and they are/were misrepresenting both the products. Compusa's Silver Grease: *****2 pack; 97% pure micronized silver 75-80% silver content by weight Thermal conductivity 8.2 w/m degrees Kelvin External Temp. Limits; -60 degrees to 170 degrees OCZ Ultra II Silver Premium Compund: Thermal paste 3 gram syringe Thermal conductivity: 8.0 W/mK Thermal Resistance:>.06 C-in/W Made with 99.9% pure micronized silver Over 70% silver content by weight Not electrically conductive********* I will go on the record stating I am very pleased OCZ acted rapidly, and effective, January 22nd 2004 OCZ's recall will be in effect and the OCZ Ultra II will contain Arctic Silver 5. Compusa has been contacted and they refuse to comment and refuse to cooperate. I also would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your e-mails in support of my Article, I am trying to reply to each and every one of you. I am receiving hundreds and hundreds of e-mails so please bear with me. Stay tuned for Part 2 of my article, it will be an interesting read. Silversinksam
I've always been a huge proponent of NOT using that nasty thermal paste. Makes a horrible mess on your CPU.
Not that heat sink goop is a bad thing, merely that it conducts heat very poorly anyway. So it isn't critical what kind you use.
The critical thing is that the silicon directly contacts the copper as much as possible so that the heat can transfer across that interface.
The heat sink goop is nearly tangential. If your heatsink contacts your chip well, it likely won't overheat even with silicone goop. If your heatsink doesn't contact the chip will, silver paste won't save it.
As to your "shouldn't able to tell it's there" thing, you might as well have stolen that out of my post which says "There shouldn't even be a visible film of it after heat sink removal, just small pockets in the imperfections on the chip."
The only thing products like "Arctic Silver" do is allow your cpu to stay a few degrees cooler. Dan's Data has lots of good info (including charts, etc) on this.
I recently built a computer for my brother, and suggested he get Arctic Silver. Why? Because it was a small XPC case, which uses passive cooling; heat retension would be a concern, so the few degrees AS would give could be important at some point. On my computer, Im using a big case with lots of fans (active cooling), so the cheap stuff works just fine.
BTW, Dan's Data also tested toothpaste as a thermal paste. Now while there are issues why you wouldnt use this for real, it received better scores than Arctic Silver =)
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
A bottle that claims "100% fruit juice not from concentrate" must contain only juice from fruit, no sugar, no water. A bottle of cranberry juice which says "cranberry juice", contains only the juice of cranberries. If it says "from concentrate" then it contains cranberry concentrate and water -- different batches of cranberries may be mixed together adjust the sweetness/tartness, but no sugar or acid is added.
A bottle of cranberry drink labeled as "100% fruit juice" is probably not actually 100% cranberry juice -- as you say, most fruit juice is "cut" with apple juice (Okay, so you were right on that). But it's all fruit juice, from some fruit or another.
If the label says "drink", "cocktail", "punch" or "delight", it may contain water, sugar, etc.
Lastly, the contents of a "fruit flavored drink" may not actually include any fruit products at all!
(The above is based on UK labelling standards, IANAL, YMMV)
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I shall have to get some for next year's Christmas baking.
A. Rightmann
Silver as the moon
OCZ paste is really
Wet, brown and smelly
Take the silver and make heat sinks out of it.
Charge weight value * 20.
You would make a fortune... well atleast some decnt money.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You must have felt like throwing away lots of money then. Most goop isn't use once throw away. It usually lasts for a multitude of uses. Do you think it would come with a lid if it was use once throw away? How much goop did you use on that video card? ya know, it's not supposed to be dripping off the sides and all over the card...
My email to this BONEHEAD:
You're A MORON, The grease is keeping the acid off the metal!!!!!
How about degreasing each sample with laquer thinner using a paper filter or something. Then, test the resultant POWDER.
If you want to get fancy you could even weigh the filter paper, the sample before, and powder after to see what the relative component weights are. Though, your initial testing methods don't make me overflow whith confidence in your empirical talents. Do yourself a favor and go back to High School Chemistry class before you start pointing fingers based on your "analyses".
Okay. Let me see if I can make this easy for you.
Take 100% pure silver, in a bar. What is its consistency?
Melt it. Now what is its consistency?
Grind it up into an ultra-fine powder. Now what is its consistency?
Now take the ground up silver and mix it with, say, baby oil, until it's 90% silver and 10% baby oil. Now what is its consistency?
And that's basically what the stuff is supposed to be, except that it's some kind of wax or oil that isn't made with babies.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Use KY2 !!! for your lubrication needs. Goes a long way - you blow up before it does.
So, uh, let's try that again, with feeling. (The cut-and-paste buffer causes some slight problems when you don't successfully cut.)
> They probably made a great deal of money on the bottles they did sell, and will charge back all costs to the
> manufacturer on the bottles they did are recalling.
I don't necessarily disagree with your point of view, but this part is totally wrong. Unless they were outsourcing it to Canada or something, there's no way they'll manage to charge back any costs to anyone. Typically when there's a problem like this the expenses just get written off because it is nearly impossible to sue someone in a 'business-friendly' third world country.
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Reminds me of one time I cut a golf ball in half. The boxed claimed that it had a Titanium core, and showed a drawing of a ball cut in half with a small metalic ball in the center.
when I cut the ball I found only an homogenous pink plastic-y substance inside. I dunno it might hace contained titanium powder or something. The bix didn't mention how much titanium was inside. The drawing on the box was definitely not a representation of the real thing
Its just like McD's and their 100% Pure beef patties... When they have Alot of Soy and other Stuffs in em... As Long as they use some 100% Beef(Lord forbid walking into the Supermarket and seeing some Ground beef made from 15% Pure beef!) They can mislead the public to think that the patty is all Beef when its Actually not..
I do not find this shocking at all. But what I do find shocking is a "Geek" That trusts a Marketing LIne on a product without Doing some homework... Well Thats what the article is about... But There should be 0% Surprize from the reading public.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Silver is for amateurs. Professionals get significantly better heat tranfer using neutronium.