Introduction

Arctic Silver is an established and highly recognizable name in the PC cooling world ever since their introduction of the first Arctic Silver thermal grease. Over the years they improved their thermal grease and have one of the most popular high performance thermal compounds available with the Arctic Silver 3 compound. Of course there always was the persistent problem of the compound using micronized silver that made the compound conductive. To solve this problem, they set about engineering a new compound that would have the same performance but be an electrical insulator. The result is their new Ceramique thermal grease.

Ceramique is a unique blend of aluminum oxide, boron nitride and zinc oxide in a polysynthetic oil that contains no silicone. Arctic Silver claims that the compound when applied properly will have a 2 to 10 degree centrigrade (3.5 to 18 Farenheit) lower temperature compared to a standard thermal grease or compound. Of course, it is important to follow the installation instructions to obtain these results. With that in mind, this review will be testing these performance claims.

Testing Method and Configuration

Testing of the compounds was done under conditions that were controlled as much as possible. Ambient room temperatures for the testing were conducted between 70 and 72 F. All processors were allowed to run 24 hours prior to testing to let the compounds set up properly. After this period, the systems were allowed to cool for 1 hour. The system was then powered back up for 1 hour to obtain idle temperature readings by the on-processor temperature diode recorded by Motherboard Monitor 5. SiSoft Sandra's burn-in wizard was then used to stress the processors at a full load for about 1 hour. The highest recorded temperature reading from the on-board diode was then taken for the load reading.

The hardware configuration for the testing was as follows:

The thermal compounds used for the testing were:

• Stock AMD Heatsink Thermal Pad
• Generic Silicone Thermal Grease
• Arctic Silver Ceramique

All installation and cleaning instructions from Arctic Silver were used to properly remove and install thermal compounds between tests. It should be noted that the Ceramique compound is much thicker than most normal thermal grease compounds. This makes it a bit more difficult to apply to the heatsink, but still acceptable. Since the compound also comes in a 2.7g syringe container, it is very easy to control the amount of grease that gets applied to the surfaces.

Results and Conclusions

Here are the results for the three thermal compounds from the tests:

Based on the testing results, the Arctic Silver Ceramique passes the marketing claims of the 2 to 10 degree lower temperatures. It was interesting to note that during the temperature readings from the idle time frame, the temperature differences between the Ceramique compound and the generic paste and pad were very similar. It was only when the processor was running at a full load that the compound really started to shine, showing a full 5 degree centigrade difference. While this is not a full 10 degree difference, it was still a respectable performance.

Individuals looking for a high performance thermal compound will be very pleased with the performance of the Ceramique compound. It has the great advantage over the Arctic Silver compound because it is non-conductive and more importantly, less expensive. The temperature difference noticed during testing provides a significant difference for those individuals who are overclocking their processors.

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