Arctic Silver / Alumina Thermal Adhesives Discontinued?

I just noticed that Arctic seem to have discontinued both their Silver and Alumina thermal adhesives:

http://www.arcticsilver.com/ta.htm

and indeed, they do seem to have gone out of stock from a lot of sellers. Has anyone here heard anything beyond that?

If it is true, then it might be an idea to secure any supplies you were planning to use in the near future. Alternatively, if any of you are using other decent thermal adhesives, I’d appreciate it if you could list them here for us.

There is literally 0 places where it’s available online in my country. :frowning:
I will call all local shops tomorrow, maybe some have it in stock…
Anyway, thanks for the heads up.

ADDED: I sought AATA-5G instead of product name and managed to secure last 2 items! :slight_smile:

That’s really bad news. I use arctic alumina all the time for mods.

Anyone know of any alternatives to Arctic Alumina that work similarly?

I see they still offer their OEM products…

It’s still on the website, they probably just haven’t shipped out a new batch for a while so places are running out.

I just bought 4 packs of it from mtnelectronics a few days ago because it was the only place that still had them at a reasonable price.

I think walmart has some too last time I checked.

Look closer at their website: it’s explicitly marked as discontinued.

RMM had 4 a little while ago :wink:

http://www.mtnelectronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=25_74&product_id=113

Well, the page I found:

http://www.arcticsilver.com/ta.htm

actually says “DISCONTINUED”, and the links from there to both types of adhesive have been disabled. As Agro points out, you can still click through to the OEM manufacturing page, so it’s not looking good for us.

Oh wow didn’t notice that :frowning:
Maybe I should have bought 40 tubes instead of 4 :stuck_out_tongue:

I saw that.

But that’s Arctic Silver. I much prefer Arctic Alumina. Unlike Arctic Silver, Arctic Alumina is not capacative so can be safely used for thermal potting.

In any event… I just bought the last 3. It’s not Arctic Alumina, but it’s better than nothing.

Still lots available on Ebay. But some more there.

Never even thought about using Arctic Alumina for thermal potting, never heard of anybody using as such? I use Stycast when I get it through work or MG Chemical thermal potting epoxy.

https://www.amazon.com/MG-Chemicals-Thermally-Conductive-Encapsulating/dp/B008UH4CRM

Actually I said “thermal potting” when I meant to say “potting”.

Occasionally, I want to protect some of the electronics on top of a driver board, so I’ll glop on some arctic alumina. Not much … just enough to cover it. Arctic Alumina works great and cures fast.

Stars-922 heatsink plaster is quite good and pretty inexpensive. Standard thermal paste right at the underside and dabs of Stars-922 around or by the sides. A down to earth solution imho.

Cheers

Ain’t gonna be the end of the world, even if.

Someone’ll fill the gap (haha) at some point. There’s liquid metal, all sorts of other brands of thermal goop that people were touting.

Liquid metal is basically the complete opposite of alumina, it is electrically conductive.

MTN electronics actually ran out of it.
Walmart has some but is limited to 1 per purchase: Robot or human?
microcenter has some in stores, I’m not sure about their online stock through: http://www.microcenter.com/product/391673/Arctic_Alumina_Premium_Ceramic_Thermal_Adhesive
FrozenCPU also has a bunch, but they are a bit of a sketchy place to buy from after an event that happened a few years ago: http://www.frozencpu.com/products/3771/thr-07/Arctic_Alumina_Adhesive_Premium_Ceramic_Thermal_Epoxy\_-\_5_Gram_set_AATA-5G.html

Good to know, thanks!

I was actually wondering about using non-adhesive thermal paste and holding things in place with a bit of ordinary epoxy. Might work, as long as the assembly is amenable to being clamped together while the epoxy cures.

The concern I’d have is whether the epoxy would crack under thermal stress and expansion of the two parts being held together. Maybe use silicone glue rather than epoxy…

Even plain epoxy has about 20 times the thermal conductivity of air :slight_smile:

That or mixing thermal paste with epoxy is what people did before alumina existed.
I really like alumina for heatsinking my drivers though, really useful for permanently sticking a heatsink on them.
I’ve emailed them asking about why it’s discontinued, if they have plans for replacement, or if they can sell me some of their OEM ceramic epoxies.
I’ll let you guys know what they say if they reply.

Wellp, I don’t want to be inconvenienced, so I cleaned out Microstore today. :smiley:

Got 6 tubes. Ordered 5 overnight, got the whole plastic bin with 6 tubes in there.

“You wanted 5? There are 6 in here.”

“Ah, that’s fine, I’ll take all 6.” :smiling_imp:

You mean 6 sets of tubes?
Because they come in pairs right…
So 12 tubes.