Intel stock thermal compound

[dukeofsolidsrfc]

Does anyone know if the stock thermal compound on an intel processor is electrically conductive or not? Specifically the compound on the stock heatsink in box with intel q8300.

 

[Deleted member 362816]

Yes its a metal compound. The white stuff is the only that isnt.

 

[RetiredChief]

cia24 MAY be correct: However the fact that the HS compond contains metal does not in itself make it conductive. Example Artic Silver 5 contains pure Silver, but is non-conductive. Silver is the Best conductor, followed by copper and gold is 3rd (of Common metals, excluding some alloys). I would expect most HS coumpound is non-conductive with some exceptions.

This does not mean that you can "smear" on pins or MB traces. While it is nonconductive it is capacitive. If it was accross a Positive voltage and ground - no effect. However if it was across a "signal" trace/pin to ground, depending on the frequency it could be an effective short.

To verify you would need to dig up/google a spec sheet on the properties on the specific compound.

 

[dukeofsolidsrfc]

I tried to find out on the web and it seemed to be no consensus so I broke down and called Intel. The answer I got was no.

 

[RetiredChief]

As I guessed, But remember it is capacitive. That is it acts like a capacitor.
A capacitor acts like a resistor when you have High freqencies.

This is just an illistration and values are hypothetical. Say the paste was across two pins, one has the 100 Mhz and the other happened to be ground and the capacitance was the same as 100 nanofarads, then it would be the same as 1/ (2 x 3.14 x 0.1 x 10 to the -6 x 100 x 10 to the 6) = 0.016 ohms This would be the same as if it was conductive and would short the 100 MHz signal to ground.

Remember, I just used a number out of my head, the capacitance could be 1 picofarads
not as bad, 159 ohms, but still not good. To many variables to give a good estimate, ie thichness and distance between the two points.