Customer Reviews

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound 3.5 Grams with ArctiClean 60 ML Kit

5 star:		(97)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Arctic Silver 5 (or AS5) is the best thermal compound on the market IMHO. It's basically an essential if you're installing a new CPU. This kit is everything you need to clean your heat sink, prepare the surface of the heatsink and your CPU, and ensure that your chip functions at the coolest temps possible.

If you apply the compound correctly, the result is always a 4-10c drop in CPU temperatures under load. You will not notice a huge difference at idle. The real gains in heat dissipation come when the CPU is being pushed. Also, don't trust the board maker's proprietary software to tell you what your temperatures are; download a good program like RealTemp 2.41 or Everest for free (use google to find them). Either will give you more accurate numbers than Asus PC Probe, or whatever software your board manufacturer supplies.

The instructions provided with this kit are minimal (small text on the side of the bottles) and could be confusing if you've never used thermal paste before, so here are some detailed instructions that will help you do it right. Here is the process:

1. Remove the old thermal compound. This is accomplished by using the remover (bottle 1). Apply a several drops of the cleaner to the top of the chip and let it soak for 20-30 seconds. You might have to reapply more drops of cleaner again depending on how much thermal compound was present on the chip to begin with, or how hard it's gotten over time. Wipe all the waste off with a lintless cloth or cotton swabs. You might have to do this several times. Make sure you get it as clean as you can before moving to step 2.

2. Apply the surface cleaner (Bottle 2). Apply several drops, and then work them over the entire surface of the chip or heatsink in a circular motion. Make sure there are no traces of the old compound. You can tell that the surface is perfectly clean when you can wipe it with a new q-tip and it comes away pure white.

3. Apply Arctic Silver 5. DO NOT USE TOO MUCH! If you do, it will squish outside the edge of the chip, get on your motherboard, the CPU locking mechanism, your hands, etc... It makes a real mess. Start with a small amount and add more if necessary. The idea here is to get a THIN, EVEN LAYER across the entire chip surface. A toothpick actually work's really well at spreading the paste around. You should not be able to see any part of the metal of the chip when you're done. Less is more in this instance; many people think they need to slather this stuff onto the chip, but trust me that does nothing but make a mess.

4. Install your heat sink and fan assembly. I recommend getting an aftermarket heat sink as those provided by Intel are notoriously poor. Zalman makes some great ones. Do NOT buy on that uses push pins to lock in place. You want one with screws and mounting bracket so that it is very securely attached to the motherboard and in turn, your CPU. This is probably equally important to applying the thermal compound correctly, because all the compound in the world won't help you if the heatsink isn't making solid contact with the chip's surface.

If you follow those steps, you will see a massive improvement in your core temps. Just remember that heat dissipation is achieved by the fans in your case and heatsinks, not the compound itelf. The compound simply allows for a much better transfer for heat from chip-->heatsink. I swear by Arctic Silver, and I promise you it works if you use it correctly.

Background:
I have an older computer than most of the reviewers here. It's a Dell XPS400 with a 3.2GHz Pentium-D dual-core processor. These CPUs were manufactured with the older 65ns fabs, which means they consume a lot of power and generate a lot of heat. It's showing it's age now, but it's still fast enough to run Windows 7 64-bit.

The Problem:
Lately, I've noticed that my computer was getting louder and louder. I would rationalize it because the weather is getting warmer and I was playing some CPU intensive games. Eventually, it got to the point where it sounded like a jet engine was keeping my girlfriend from sleeping. Being the cheapskate that I am, I would rather add better cooling than to simply buy a new computer system. It then dawned to me that the computer was nearly FOUR YEARS OLD and the thermal paste had probably dried out by now. Vacuuming out and reapplying the thermal grease would be my cheapest option.

The Product:
I haven't built a computer from scratch in a long time, but many years ago when I did, Arctic Silver was the product to get. I did some research and it appeared that it was still considered one of the best thermal paste applications around. I found it on Amazon for a good price and purchased the Arctic Silver kit (includes ArctiClean1, ArctiClean2, & Arctic Silver 5). I opened up my computer, cleaned off all the dust and followed the Arctic Silver instructions.

ArctiClean1 - dissolves and emulsifies the old thermal grease on your CPU and heatsink. If your computer came pre-built, the manufacturer most likely used way too much. I had to reapply around three times to make sure all the previous thermal grease was removed.

ArctiClean2 - removes and purified any residue left by ArctiClean1. It pretty much makes sure there's nothing in the way of the thermal grease and the CPU or heasink. I reapplied this around three times also.

Arctic Silver - it's been a while since I've had to apply thermal grease, but I do remember the most important rule. Do not overuse the grease! Use it sparingly as too much will be detrimental to its performance. Follow the instructions - [...].

The Result:
The break-in period for this product is 200 hours. I'm about 6 hours in, but I've already noticed a huge difference. While, the fan is still going, it's not nearly as loud as before. It definitely won't keep anyone from falling asleep anymore.

Recommendation:
This is a great product and I highly recommend getting the kit. It makes removing the previous thermal grease much easier and preps your heatsink and CPU way better than I could have using my own means. Highly recommended!

Arctic Silver 5 is one of THE names in thermal compound for mounting heatsinks.

Not made clear in the description of this product, however, is that you're paying somewhat of a premium price for a tiny bottle of xylene cleaner (e.g., Goo Gone) and a tiny bottle of isopropyl alcohol. If you happen to have those items lying around in your cleaning arsenal, there's not much value added by this kit.

It's certainly possible that if you don't have those items lying around and you don't actually have any other need of them, you might save a bit of money with this kit in that you might pay a bit more than the extra 5 or 6 bucks for a bottle of cleaner and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. However, you'd end up with a much larger supply of those items for not a lot more money.

In the end, the kit is just fine for what it is. I'm just slightly groused that the description made it seem like the added components are more exotic than they really are.

Most people in the market have already heard of Arctic Silver; it's fair to say that Arctic Silver is to thermal paste what Kleenex is to facial tissues. In any case, this reputation is well-deserved, as the performance of this thermal paste is still top-notch.

I just built a budget gaming computer for $400 total based on a (now overclocked) Athlon II X3 425 and Radeon 4850 1 GB. I did not purchase an aftermarket cooler immediately, as I got the boxed version of the CPU. However, after overclocking to 3 GHz, I realized that replacement thermal paste and aftermarket cooling would be necessary. In keeping with the budget philosophy of my build, I chose to go with the Cooler Master Hyper TX3. Although the TX3 does come with its own tube of thermal paste, I figured I might as well get the AS5 kit, since I'd need to clean the CPU anyway.

In any case, the cooler and thermal paste did the trick. My CPU is now running at 3.36 GHz on stock voltages, up from 2.7 GHz. Temperatures are substantially cooler than the stock heatsink at stock clocks. Performance is up anywhere from 10-18% depending on benchmarks, and the total cost of the additional cooling is less than 10% of the build. I'd say that's a decent return on investment.

After upgrading my Mac Mini to an Intel T7600 and applying Arctic Silver 5, my processor's average temperature dropped from 170 degrees F to 140. Make sure to use only enough to lay a light film over the CPU. One tube seems to have enough paste to cover dozens of CPUs. ArctiClean easily removed the old paste and smells nice!

Until very recently my Sony Vaio desktop with 3.2GHz P4 had CPU temps between 40C and 80C, very frequently exceeding 70C whenever the CPU was exercised heavily.

I searched Amazon for a cooling solution. I could not find with certainty any mechanical heatsink+fan that would properly attach to my mobo. Then I noticed the listings for thermal pastes and was intrigued that one of the offerings, Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound, averaged 5 stars from 17 customers, indicating either a great product or false info, but I've noticed that on Amazon, falsely inflated 5 star ratings by shills for the manufacturer tend to be negated over time by angry buyers who had negative experiences.

I tried the Arctic Silver 5 along with the ArtiClean kit. Nothing false about the 5 star rating. It's worked very well on my system. The highest CPU temp yet observed is 55C, and the CPU typically operates at 48-52C once warmed up.

Nathan Beauchamp states that Arctic Silver 5 comes with poor instructions. It's certainly true that the kit itself comes with virtually no documentation, and my initial look at the website found nothing. However, after some further digging I found the following link that gives authoritative directions -- http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm.

Quite frankly, I am amazed that a paste can have so much effect on cooling.

This was my first time applying thermal compound to an aftermarket heatsink (I always used thermal pads before) so I decided to go with this kit in case I needed to remove it because I put too much or put it on the wrong way (which I did a couple of times). The kit has enough thermal grease and cleaning liquids to apply to at least 10 heatsinks (I know I wasted like 4 applications because I put on too much and it spread outside of the heatsink after moving the heatsink around).

The price for shipping may seem a little bit high but it still comes out to less money then it would if you buy it from any other major online retailer and you wouldnt get the microfiber cloth from other retailers.

I would highly recommend this kit if its your first time playing around with thermal grease, and a tip from me:

The best way to apply the thermal grease is to put a tiny little dot in the middle of the heatsink (not too much or it will go outside of the heatsink when you mount it on top)... I tried the "Line" technique that Arctic Silver suggested on their site for Intel i7 CPU's and it became a big mess when I placed the heatsink on top of it and moved it around a little.

if you are spending money on building a new system and you don't spend the extra 3 dollars on a decent thermal paste, you're crazy. this is by far the best paste on the market, and has been for years.

I would even recommend putting this on any new store bought pc, or even an older pc < should put on new paste every 5 years if you keep your system that long.

as for the cleaning kit, use it on old paste, or bare brand new processors. making sure your surface is clean is one of the most important steps to building a great computer.

instructions for cleaning the surface are place a few drops on the old paste or new processor, wait a minute, wipe clean with a soft, lint free rag. repeat until everything is gone, then do it one more time. then prep the surface.

the steps should be pretty much clean+clean+clean+clean then prep+prep.. then you are ready for the paste.

applying the paste is easy, but there are so many video's on people doing "how to apply paste" instructions, that are doing it wrong, I figured I would tell you how to do it on here.

first off, you never spread the paste, or touch it in any way, doing those 2 things will cause air bubbles in the paste, and cause heat spots which will lower the life of your computer and raise up temps.

all you do to apply the paste, is put a rice sized glob of paste in the center of your processor, and put the heat sink down on the processor and tighten it. the heat sink will spread it out for you as you tighten it down. don't remove the heat sink after you put the paste on it < some people think they need to check the paste to make sure it is good > because if you remove the heat sink, you essentially created air pockets and you will need to re clean, prep and apply the paste.

hope I helped!

This stuff saves so much time it is really unbelievable it works like a charm. The remover is 10 times faster than anything else I used.

I had recently purchased a E8400 from amazon. I had been using no thermal paste at all which was dangerous because I reached degrees of 90C while playing a game and 60C idle.
I hastily purchased a thermal paste, which was this one. All I can say is WOW.
My idle temperature went from 60C to 39C.
While playing the same game it went from 90C to 51C.
MAJOR improvement. I would defiantly buy this again for future processors.