When it comes to cooling, using good thermal paste is as important as using the best cooler or water cooling system. Many American overclockers claim that most thermal pastes perform about the same with a 1-3 °C difference at most. It might be true for them because they can easily obtain reasonably good thermal goop over there and they have a lot more choices. But things are a little different here in Malaysia. There are limited types of thermal paste available here and they are often of poor quality as well.

There are two types of white thermal pastes in Malaysia which can be easily found in many electrical stores or computer stores. I bought one a long time ago - more than a few years back. It came in a rather large tube. Now, there's less than 10% left. No specifications are available. I don't even know if it's silicon based or not! But many local computer stores use it because it's cheap.

On the other end of the scale, we have the Arctic Silver thermal paste. Now, Arctic Silver is undoubtedly one of the most popular thermal pastes in the market. It's a very consistent, high performance thermal paste that does not degrade over time, unlike other thermal pastes. Because of its high silver content, Arctic Silver is one of the best thermal paste you can get.

But it also has some drawbacks. Silver is an excellent electrical conductor so the Arctic Silver is highly conductive. I've heard many stories of destroyed processors and RAM chips due to the misuse of Arctic Silver. You have to take extreme care when you apply the Arctic Silver to avoid damaging any of your chips. Also, retailing at USD 8 per tube, Arctic Silver II is not all that affordable.

If you have been to [H]ardForum a few months earlier, you would have heard about the new thermal paste called Arctic Alumina which was about to be released. Unlike its predecessor, Arctic Alumina is a newly formulated thermal paste. The Arctic Alumina Thermal Compound is a ceramic-based, polysynthetic thermal paste designed to fill the microscopic gaps in between the processor and the cooler. Similar to Arctic Silver II, the Arctic Alumina is optimized for small contact area. Today, we are going to take a close look at this new thermal compound from Arctic Silver Inc.!