My Rig: Extensive advice or insite needed plz!

[aspire]

Arctic Silver 5 is total crap, don't use it. Use whatever paste came with the new heatsink or buy some Tuniq TX-2.
Newegg.com - Tuniq TX-2 Cooling Thermal Compound

Alcohol will work fine to clean up the old paste.

Seems like a pretty harsh take on the thermal compound that used to be the industry standard. It's not as good as others on the market nowadays, but it's nowhere near as bad as the white glue that comes with some heatsinks.

 

[Muffin Man]

congratulations, you have the second fastest graphics card in the world... next to the $1300 Asus Ares

hm, well if you wanna get a little technical the ares would actually share the second spot with the xfx 5970 4gb BE, both have 850mhz core/1200mhz mem clocks w/ 4gigs of memory.

again with the "technically", the sapphire 5970 4gb toxic is top dog, only difference is its 900mhz core clock.

these are their stock clocks though, things would surely change with some OCin.

 

[Therow]

congratulations, you have the second fastest graphics card in the world... next to the $1300 Asus Ares

Haha, epic! Totally stoked now! I'll have to get some other thermal paste though XD

I'll check some of my local comp-shops and see if they have some of the other recommended thermal compound XD

Ps- On a side note, if i were to want to look into schooling for computer hardware and general computer building stuff, where would i look? I'm an animation major, but i love looking into computer stuff! Getting more under your belt never hurts either as far as schooling goes. I know the basics somewhat, but i want to know more

Anyone know where i should look? Technical school or something like that? Just wondering, i guess i could do some of my own leg work but its just a curiosity atm

Uber thanks again!

 

[Abstract Hero]

Depends on where you live Devry and ITT are big ones I know that are in Cali but they aren't that great. I go to Collins for video game production and I know we have a Computer Engineering-esk course but being a predominately art school i don't know how good it is but they do have campuses in Cali as well.

 

[Slaymate]

Seems like a pretty harsh take on the thermal compound that used to be the industry standard. It's not as good as others on the market nowadays, but it's nowhere near as bad as the white glue that comes with some heatsinks.

I've tested and reviewed dozens of different thermal pastes in the last 5 years and Arctic Silver 5 is usually 2nd to last with Arctic Silver Ceramique bringing up the rear.

In it's time Arctic Silver 5 was by far the best product of it's kind. But it's the same old formula, it hasn't changed while other companies have made significant improvements.

The biggest problem with Arctic Silver 5 is it's consistency. It's too thick and it doesn't spread well when you allow the weight of the heatsink to spread it. So most people spread it by hand and they always use to much or they get thick and thin spots. Plus it has a "Break In" time, they recommend at least 200 hours of run-time (not counting that the system needs to be turned off to allow the compound to cool several times) before thermal equilibrium is achieved. And then your lucky if it's a degree or 2 cooler running.

Arctic Silver does have a new product out, it's called Arctic Silver Matrix and it was developed for them by TimConsultants using TM 0098 grease as it's base model. I've used 0098 grease in the past, it's an excellent product so I'm thinking the Matrix paste should be some good stuff.
Arctic Silver Incorporated - Matrix
Newegg.com - Arctic Silver MTX-2.5G Matrix Thixotropic Premium Thermal Compound

 

[Sean W.]

arguably the best thermal compound is Shin Etsu... but its like $12 for a tiny amount... i went to Frys and got like 10 tubes for free

 

[Slaymate]

For the price Tuniq TX-2 is hard to beat. But the new Arctic Silver Matrix is priced about the same.

These numbers are from my old QX6850, I haven't done a complete retest since then.

 

[Sean W.]

huh, per that scale it beats shin etsu... im eating my words

what cooler were you using?

 

[Slaymate]

huh, per that scale it beats shin etsu... im eating my words

what cooler were you using?

Those numbers were from a non-lapped TRUE and a non-lapped QX6850 engineering sample.

Shin-Etsu is an excellent paste, if it was priced a little better it would still be highly recommended. But it's priced like it's made of Gold so you probably won't see me recommending it, even if it was the best.

Edit: I thought I hit the Quote button on your post but I accidentally hit the edit button. My bad.

 

[Sean W.]

the only reason i got shin etsu is cause i got it for free