Thermal paste

That stuff would be fine for low amp draw but if your going to be pushing over one amp you'll probably be better off getting the arctic Silver thermal adhesive. it's a 2-part epoxy. it will set in about 10-15 min depending on temp. 75% cure in probably 6 hrs.

I use MX-4, but in the future I might switch to coollaboratory liquid ultra because liquid metal performs a lot better than regular thermal pastes.
Also, thermal paste like AS5 or MX-4 is not supposed to cure. Dried up thermal paste = bad performance.

Ain’t supposta. I use AS5 all the time. Needs a few hot/cold cycles to really get into its groove (burning off volatiles), but after that, it’s supposta stay fluid.

If you want something to “cure”, use a 2-part epoxy/adhesive, but consider that permanent. As in you’ll have to dremel off the part and leftover epoxy to get it off.

Fujik is good for when you need something rubbery to “stick” a star to a pill, ferinstance. But it isn’t as effective as AS5.

Great middle-ground between performance and permanence.

Eg, I need to mount small resistors between taillamp assy and car body to fix so-called “hyperflash” after replacing hotwire bulbs with LEDs. No way am I going to epoxy it into place, and AS5 would let it just slide off after a while. Fujik will keep it in-place but only semi-permanently.

So which you use (goop/epoxy/caulk) depends on your application.

Darn. Lol. Bought the wrong stuff

Some people use AS-5 or other paste under and adhesive at the edge. This gives a high performance thermal bond that is fixed yet easier to remove than adhesive alone.

+1 for that
I used Arctic silver 5 in the middle of my Convoy S2+ and Eagle Eye X2R and arctic silver 2 component on the edges

Liquid metal is not good on aluminum as it corrodes it

In the next days I get special solder that is advertized that it can be soldered on aluminum, that should be the best heat transfer possible
Soldered star to brass pill shows how good it is as it gets a lot harder to solder the wires back on the star

That’s fine. Just send me your leftover AS5. I’ll give it a good home. :smiley:

Are you talking about Stannol ALUSOL? I’m really interessted in the results.

SRA soldering products has this Al26-181-75 aluminum to aluminum, aluminum-copper soldering paste. Melts at 217C(423F)

The best thermal paste at the moment is “thermal grizzly” and not Arctic Silver 5! :person_facepalming:

Kinda spendy, though, for marginal benefit (a couple of °C).

If you need the absolute best, by all means. But wow, I got sticker-shock the first time I priced TG.

I’ve had good results myself using Arctic Silver Ceramique 2.

Normally I use MX-4 unless I need something for a super special applications, MX-4 has a great balance of performance and price. Also use a gallium alloy TIM when I can. If I recall pastes normally work better than epoxies given a good level of pressure. Pressure is often just as important as the TIM you use.

Yup, I would highly recommend using a thermal paste + screws rather than a thermal epoxy.
Better performance, easier to swap out LEDs, and less damage.

I will get tomorrow most likely my aluminum solder stuff
If it works like this I will solder stars to aluminum head

The flux residue has to be removed with water as it is corrosive

Well, when trying to solder it to something that is intended to be a heatsink it will be really hard to get it to melt…
Make sure you have a 60W or more soldering iron and remove all drivers/o-rings/plastic from the light before you heat it up to 200C+
Since a flashlight is built like a heatsink, getting the head to 200C will probably make the rest of the body sit at over 100C.

Long ago I tweaked my PCs
Water cooling and high end stuff
Arctic silver was the way to go
Then a completely overclocked PC with several water cooling loops and a real expensive video card was my pride and joy
It scored really high on several tests but alas it sprung a leak after half a year of operation.
While looking for what to build next I ordered a basic really cheap motherboard with onboard graphics that accepted my CPU.

It wasn’t long till I realised that despite much lower benchmark scores this setup did what I wanted and not feel slow.
So I waited a bit with ordering a new setup. I looked through my parts bin, and measured all components temps, stuck heatsinks on all that became hot.
Lol I had so much heatsinks just the silent fan of the power unit gave enough airflow to keep all cool.
Holy dang, this PC was silent and fast enough.
On top of that after half a year I received a letter from the energy company and got a refund twice asbhigh as the parts that I bought to get it going had cost me.

One of the things I bought with my order was a big syringe with cheap thermal paste
I did test it and compared to the Arctic silver it had my CPU 2°C higher at burnin tests.
But the stuff cost me FL2 (like €0,80 $1,10 ) for a huge amount where the Arctic stuff was$6,50 for a tiny amount.

I used it but it got lost during the move here, I ordered something similar for I think $1 or $2 on AliExpress and it works nice.

Just fyi, heat is measured in watts not degrees, so 2C doesn’t really say how big the difference is.
2C drop on a 150W CPU is far more significant than 2C on a 50W CPU.
Also a big reason why you pay more for high quality thermal compound is so that it can last many years without drying, because when it dries then the performance drops.

HY710 20g Silver Thermal Compound Paste Fett Silikon für PC CPU Kühler Sale - Banggood Deutschland sold out-arrival notice-arrival notice

The thermal conductivity of that stuff is absolute crap.

Buying good quality thermal compound like MX-4, NT-H1, IC-D will make a huge difference.