By using aluminum oxide (alumina) and boron nitride, Arctic Silver claims that this thermal compound will perform about as well as their Arctic Silver II thermal compound. Now, because ceramic is an electrical insulator and the Arctic Alumina is ceramic-based, it is an electrical insulator and is neither electrically conductive nor capacitive.

I couldn't actually test its conductivity (or lack of) because I don't have a multi-meter. With its lack of electrical conductivity, Arctic Alumina is completely safe to be applied on the RAM chips of your graphics card or AMD processors. Now, even if you accidentally smear some Arctic Alumina on electrical circuits or the notorious L bridges on AMD processors, you needn't worry about shorting anything.

Arctic Silver II, Arctic Alumina and generic thermal paste (top to bottom)

Note that the new Arctic Alumina does not contain any silicon. It has to be applied in a very thin layer, being in the first distinctive phase. When you fire up your system, the heat generated from the processor will cause the Arctic Alumina to slowly thin out and fill the microscopic gaps between the processor die and the heat sink. During the next 20 to 100 hours, the Arctic Alumina will slowly thicken to its final consistency which enhances long term stability.

Arctic Alumina, Arctic Silver II and generic thermal paste (left to right)

Just like Arctic Silver II, Arctic Alumina requires some time before it reaches its peak performance. With the triple-phase consistency, it will gradually improve and after about 100 hours, reach peak performance, well, in theory at least.

I've actually compared it against the Arctic Silver II but I couldn't find any improvement at all till today, about 2-3 months after I first applied it. Unlike the 'generic' thermal paste, the performance of the Arctic Silver II did not drop a bit, which is a good sign of its long-term performance. Before I bought my first Arctic Silver II tube from Danny of OP Multimedia, I was stuck with the generic white thermal paste which degrades over time. After some time, it finally dried up and hardened. This is definitely not something I want to entrust the safety of my Pentium III to!