I ordered the Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy 7-gram package through Platinum Micro in August 2010. My application for this epoxy had nothing to do with heatsinks or computer chips.
About a year ago I installed an "Ice Zapper" heating device on my DirecTV slimline satellite dish, which is mounted to a second-story soffit on my house. The Ice Zapper is a thermostatically controlled 120-watt heater with 2 rectangular heating pads that adhere directly to the back of the dish. It activates whenever the outside temperature (as measured by the thermostat built into the power cord) drops below 35 degrees F or so, and prevents snow and ice from accumulating on the dish. The Ice Zapper is not available through Amazon as of Sept. 2010, but can be found at SkyVision.
One of the Ice Zapper heating pads came unstuck last winter, and hung there for the rest of the winter while I figured out how to repair it. Any glue used to re-adhere the heating pad to the dish would need to be tolerant of high temperatures, and also should conduct heat efficiently from the heating pad to the dish. Tech support from SkyVision recommended that I use "Permatex" adhesive from my local auto parts store. The auto parts store had various Permatex adhesives, many of which were intended for high-temperature applications, but none were touted for their thermal conductivity. Then I discovered Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy, and thought I would give it a shot.
The 7-gram Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy kit consists of two 3.5-gram syringes. In my case I mixed the epoxy while standing near the top of a 24-foot extension ladder, outdoors at 80 degrees F. I strongly recommend wearing Nitrile gloves while you mix and apply the epoxy. I started a 5-minute countdown timer and then squeezed syringes A and B into a glob, and mixed them together with the included mini-spatula. For the first 4 minutes the mixture was on the runny side, and formed long runny strands when the spatula was lifted away from the mixing surface, like hot cheese on a pizza. It was easy enough to spread the Arctic Silver onto the back side of my satellite dish using the mini-spatula. The mixture covered a 1.5" x 9" area with ease, and thankfully my mixing surface was large enough to catch drips. Clamping the heating pad in place on the convex side of a satellite dish was not very practical, so I stood there pressing the item in place until the epoxy started to firm up. It took about 10 minutes for the glue to get thick enough to hold the heating pad in place. The nitrile gloves came in handy because the epoxy, when it was runny, squeezed out from the sides of the heating pad and got all over the dish, the heating pad, and my gloves.
The Ice Zapper is back in place again, makes good contact with the satellite dish, and I shall see this winter if the Arctic Silver had the desired result. Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy
This stuff is holding up pretty good. I'm bonding some copper tubing to an aluminum heat sink (coated with a copper looking substance). No complaints. Oh... I had to wait a little bit longer for the bond to stick, I don't remember how long it says to hold the stuff together while it sets, but I recomend you double it.
Heat Sink mount broke of from the mother board, thought of giving it a shot using much heard Arctic silver thermal epoxy. Now the processor is bonded to the heat sink and does not get heated up...bond is strong that i can lift the whole CPU by the heat sink.
I would also recommend to use the arctic silver cleaner to remove the grease for better bond.
I've always hated epoxy. I still hate it. I needed to mount an air-cooled heat-sink to an i/o chip that had lost its clip. After mixing carefully, I applied the epoxy as directed on a web site. (The epoxy does not come with any instructions).
The bond failed two times. The third time things looked good but lateral pressure caused the bond to break. The forth time was a charm. However, I was not very comfortable with it.
Big minus is no manual. However, Google pointed me to a pdf copy of the manual.
Whenever I build a new system (like the dual Opteron server I just finished), I always reach for the arctic silver to help with heat CPU heat dissipation. I have read enough studies and reviews to know that artic silver is the best thermal epoxy available. As a result, I've never had a processor shutdown because of thermal overload, even in less than optimal environments. Although it barely nudges out the second best thermal epoxy, artic silver is still the best.'
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