Yes, I know that Fujik is the most popular thermal glue on this forum. But seeing specs of various Kafuter glues (K-5202, K-5204K) I see that they have nearly double thermal conductivity (1.6W/m*K) while K-5204K is cheaper.
So…can I trust those specs? And aside from that, does anyone have any experience with them?
I wanted something soft, so I didn’t like epoxy. But now, when checking Arctic conductivity (9W/m*K) I learned a new trick:
“you can mix about two parts of the adhesive with one part regular paste to achieve a compromise”
I guess that would conduct even slightly better. Though Alumina is 15 times as expensive (and after adding good paste it only gets worse), it still looks like a better option.
If it needs to be soft then there are high quality thermal pads with conductivities of 10w/mk or more.
They also cost like a hundred dollars or so depending on how big.
Disagree.
If you will build house with each even row from concrete bricks and each odd row from polyfoam brick, you wont get avarage thermal conductivity.
Each thermal grease/compound consist of two components - tiny particles of some metall and some liquid polymer. Main secret - size of this particles and density of the grease should have right proportions, that allow you apply very thick layer (close to particles size) of compound. If you just
you can easily meet situation when particles are far away from each other and cant influence on thermal conductivity.
Kafuter is a quality manufacturer, and the k-5204k is a perfectly fine thermal adhesive for what it is. Just keep your gaps small, and be mindful of using it for tasks that would exceed it’s thermal limits. I wouldn’t generally ever use it on high performance GPUs or CPUs, or on 40w tec-12076 thermo electric modules, or on anything that radiated more than a couple- few watts within a square inch, but for low wattage equipment, such as most lights, LEDs, aluminum fixtures, those kinds of thermal adhesives are more than adequate.