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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?"
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.
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
So is "silver" even a necessity to CPU cooling? If people are purchasing this compound because it is "99% silver" and place it inbetween the CPU and the heatsink, isn't there more at stake here? I mean what if there were damaged CPUs due to the usage of this compound instead of one with 99% silver? Shouldn't they be paying for more than just re-emburse you for your bunk tube you paid for? What about the bunk CPU that it fried?
So is "silver" even a necessity to CPU cooling?
No. Some people (usually overclockers) buy these "silver" compounds because they think it conducts heat better than other materials - and it probably does - but practically it isn't any better than the others, there's supposed to be _very_ little of this stuff in between the CPU and cooler, so any difference with any other compound that is fluid enough to fill all the cracks it's supposed to, is very small, and probably not even noticeable.
If people are purchasing this compound because it is "99% silver" and place it inbetween the CPU and the heatsink, isn't there more at stake here? I mean what if there were damaged CPUs due to the usage of this compound instead of one with 99% silver?
I don't see how one could fry their CPU (assuming the compound isn't useless in the more important aspects) with this, so what if it makes a 1'C difference, the thing would've fried anyway
If you push your system over the limits it's designed to go, you should monitor it, instead of trusting some magical "silver bullet" will save you - and if you don't keep an eye of those temperatures, you're an idiot. And deserve your new keychain that used to be an expensive CPU.
About small claims court:
It's a big misnomer that companies rarely show up and you'll win your $5000. Every first semester law class (well, the two 100 level classes I took did) will teach you that, except in traffic court, every civil lawsuit is guaranteed at least one appeal. Small claims court doesn't allow for lawyers, and so corporations will no-show to small claims court, and then appeal with their army of attorneys. Sometimes there will be a settlement that involves a non disclosure which is why we don't here about it on Slashdot.
it is provided by a foreign manufacturer with our specifications
I wonder where the foreign manufacturer is though, and how easy they are to prosecute. Now I feel sorry for OCZ, because it looks like they're the ones getting the shaft.
I wonder if this is one of those nasty effects of outsourcing/exterior-suppliers that will become apparent over time, sneaky cost-cutting and lower accountability.
Mmm-hmm.
I got a tube of some sort of thermal goop when I bought a new fan for my video card (the old one was spalling or got a dented ball bearing or something).
I spread the goop on the chip, clipped on the new fan, and THREW THE REST OF THE TUBE AWAY.
So the moral is: if you're going to do a recall, do it on a disposable product.
Why would you give them your business as opposed to the manufacturers who have actually had substantial amounts of silver in their product all along?
Because acts like this one, with the compensation levels they are displaying should be a guiding light to all companies.
Accidents happen, they were duped, even after asking for testing to be done on the product.
I can put you $1,000 on the gamble that CompUSA do NOTHING about their product and basically sweep the problem under the mat.
Using OCZ products shows CompUSA and companies of their ilk that consumers appreciate it when we are treat like people instead of accounts.
The T-Shirt gets me. LAN party talking point anyone? Word of mouth at its best.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Just another risk you take with outsourcing, you get what you pay for. It may seem cheap at first.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
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.
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
Actually, I though Mithril was -not- heat conductive. afterall, it's kinda designed for fighting all sorts of fiery foes.
Machine9dotNet
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.
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.
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!
"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.