[kevindd992002]

Which one of the two is better though?

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[kevindd992002]

Two Thermal adhesives stand out above all others:

1. EC360

High Performance Thermal Management – EC360

www.ec360.com

2. TechIngredients

Thermal Epoxy - 10ml + 3ml | tech-ingredients

High performance thermal epoxy - this is a thermal adhesive, not a grease/paste. 2 Part Formula3:1 Ratio10ml of blended dendritic copper with diamond3ml of graphene-hardner See how it's made in our YouTube video - https://youtu.be/8MOTMq9g8Nk

www.techingredients.com

Which one of the two is better though?

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[kevindd992002]

Not sure, people like and have good experience with both of them, if you wanna try mixing with paste, maybe Tech Ingredients, but that's just me guessing cause it's closer to what people above mentioned they were mixing. There's no review or anything (at least that I could find).

Is there like a mix ratio that I should follow if I use Tech Ingredients' adhesive?

Adhesive will give you a bit better thermal conductivity. No where close to traditional paste. 99% of the adhesive you see is rather permanent, and you won't be able to remove whatever you glued together without risking damage. Many people like to make their own mixes of adhesive however, to mitigate a bit the "permanent adhesive" part. Regular thermal paste with a few drops of super glue works well enough and it's usually not a permanent bond.

Tape works well if what you are attaching is small and light. Small aluminum or even copper heatsinks for vram modules and MOSFETs. The trick is too clean the surfaces very well. Another good trick is to also wipe the surface (once it's clean and dry) with an eraser before applying the tape (just make sure the eraser leaves no residue). Again, this will only work with light items and any amount of prying force will undo the bond.

I did mix a generic thermal paste with the thermal adhesive included in the Arctic Cooling GPU AIO kit before and they were pretty easy to remove with just a bit of heat.

Well, it's an SFP module. The heatsink is shown here:

PON STICK EPON GPON XPON SFP ONU Stick With MAC SC Connector DDM pon module 1490/1330nm 1.25Gbps 802.3ah | Lazada PH

features: chipset, for catv, onu fiber. Product Features. •. Single fiber bi-directional data links asymmetric TX 1244Mbps / RX 2488Mbps EPON ONU. application with EPON MAC. function. • SC/UPC receptacle SFP with EPON ONU MAC inside, "Plug-and-play" via auto-discovery and configuration. • 1310nm...

www.lazada.com.ph

Are those heatsinks considered "small" that a tape will work just fine?

 

[kevindd992002]

Not sure, but going by @StAndrew advice above seems like a good way. 2/3 paste, 1/3 adhesive (after both syringes of the adhesive package are mixed).

Gotcha. I'm kind of leaning towards the one-part EC360 adhesive as that just removes one more step of mixing if I decide to mix it with thermal paste.

For most components, I'd prefer a liquid adhesive. Thermal conductivity can be about the same as tape, maybe a bit less, but the bondline is invariably much thinner, so total thermal resistance is almost invariably lower.

Contrary to popular belief, I often find epoxy type adhesive easier to remove than good tape. They decompose at ~200C and will usually fall off after holding a pen torch to the heatsink for several seconds. Whatver is left over can usually be scraped off without much difficulty, especially with the aid of solvents.

From our conversation in PM a few years back, you mentioned you mostly use Arctic Alumina adhesive too. Do you still know where you can get one?

Also, do you know why thermal tape has generally better thermal conductivity than thermal adhesive? And from what I understand in your post, even if that's the case the thermal adhesive will still have better performance since it produces less thermal resistance when used?

 

[kevindd992002]

I switched over to MG Chemicals 8329TCM a while back, but there are countless usable adhesives.

The tendency for thermal tape to have better thermal conductivity is a loose one; most tapes are around 0.6-1.0W/mK, while 8329TCM is 1.4W/mK, though it's not terribly hard to find higher conductivity tapes. Anyway, the thermal conductivity is significantly dependent on the proportion of filler to binder. In a liquid adhesive, the adhesive itself is the binder. In a tape, the adhesive is normally a thin layer on top of what is essentially a stronger thermal pad, which can sometimes have more thermally conductive filler than is practical for a two-part liquid adhesive.

I see. But for example, this one:

EC360® TAPE Thermal Adhesive – EC360

www.ec360.com

This has a higher thermal conductivity than most liquid adhesives even higher than their own glue). If I understand what you're saying correctly, the glue will still outperform the tape when applied, correct?

What is your take on the aluminum vs. copper heatsinks concern for my use case?

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[kevindd992002]

Those are essentially a thermal pad with glue on each side. They are pretty thin, but a liquid adhesive will still be much thinner. The thermal resistance of a generous 2 mil (~0.05mm) thick bondline of 1.0W/mK material is the same as that 3.0W/mK tape, which is almost six mils (0.15mm) thick...and that doesn't account for the likely better void filling and wetting properties of the liquid.



Copper (of the same geometry) will perform better, but if you already have usable aluminum sinks, there is little reason to replace them.

Got it. They are already installed by the reseller but very unprofessionally. So I have to remove them and install again. If I remember correctly, acetone can easily remove the glue fragments from the heatsinks and make them clean again, correct?

 

[kevindd992002]

Is 10g of EC360 Glue plenty already? I'm contemplating between buying 10g vs. 30g because the latter has better price as expected. But with 30g, I'm thinking it's too much since I rarely use this anyway.