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"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'"
- Theodore Roosevelt |
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Arctic Silver Ceramique
Page 1 - Arctic Silver's Newest Product
Arctic Silver has been making thermal compounds and adhesives for as long as I can remember; though, that does not mean a whole lot if you consider my poor memory. I still have and use my very first 6.5g tube of Arctic Silver. So, this new tube of Ceramique should demonstrate just how far Arctic Silver has come since their first line of Arctic Silver.
Relative to a Quarter
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Ceramique is a different type of compound than we are used to seeing from Arctic Silver. For starters, it is not silver. Ceramique is made with micronized aluminum oxide, boron nitride and zinc oxide. I am not going to cover the technical aspects of the compound thoroughly, but if you want more information I encourage you to check out Arctic Silver's Ceramique page. The one key detail I feel I must mention (because it impacted my temperature taking scheme) is that Ceramique takes "100 to 300 hours of use to its final consistency designed for long-term stability". Again, I urge you to read Arctic Silver's documentation if you are interested, but there is nothing 'extraordinary' to be found there other than what I have pointed out.
Installation is a little different than what most of us are used to doing when applying thermal compounds. However, it's nothing drastic or complicated. You can find the instructions online on Arctic Silver's site. Actually, I didn't follow the instructions exactly. It does not say you are supposed to spread the grease on processors with small dies; but, I went ahead and did it anyway.
My Version of Installation
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I noticed that the paste is quite thick, at least compared to pastes I've used in the past. It seems much thicker than Arctic Silver. It makes installation a little different, but nothing an average person cannot handle. Anyway, you follow instructions and you are done. There is nothing special going on as far as installation is concerned.
Most of us just want to see how the paste performs. So, I will stop all the chatter and get down to business. I ran the tests on the Ceramique right after I installed it and 300+ hours after I installed it. This way I could see if any improvements in performance occurred doing that 100 to 300 hours it takes for Arctic Silver to reach is 'final consistency'.
| Testing Setup |
| Heatsink: |
AVC Avalanche |
| CPU: |
AMD Athlon 1800+ |
| Motherboard: |
EPoX 8RDA |
| Ambient Temperature: |
26°C |
Thermal Grease Performance
Idle (Celsius)
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| Arctic Silver |
| Ceramique (< 100hrs) |
| Ceramique (300+ hrs) |
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 42 |
 41 |
 41 |
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0 | |
7.2 | |
14.4 | |
21.6 | |
28.8 | |
36 | |
43.2 |
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Idle temperatures demonstrate a small performance increase, but nothing extreme.
Thermal Grease Performance
Load (Celsius)
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| Arctic Silver |
| Ceramique (< 100hrs) |
| Ceramique (300+ hrs) |
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| 48 |
| 46 |
| 46 |
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0 | |
8.2 | |
16.4 | |
24.6 | |
32.8 | |
41 | |
49.2 |
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As one can tell, the 300+ hour burn in time had no affect in my testing. I would tend to think this is a good thing as it means you do not have to wait around for optimal performance. Overall, the paste offers a performance increase and that is all that really matters.
I see no reason why this paste does not deserve a perfect rating. Ceramique is going for $4.75 for 3 gram tubes at stores like 2CoolTek.com, which is cheaper than Arctic Silver III ($6.00). Considering its price and performance, you can't go wrong with Ceramique.
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5 out of 5 Weird Blue Faces
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