So I found myself in the shop with a bunch of old computer parts. I decided to throw something together for my daughter to play an older game on. When it came time to assemble the GPU I figured I would use the new heat sink kit I have been kicking around for a couple years. In doing so I found the heat sink compound has all but hardened, and with no more Radio shack stores to pop into and get more I did some research on alternatives. Back in the day I do remember zinc oxide being a major component for heat sink compound (before Arctic Silver and other equivalents).
While looking around the net I’ve seen people trying all kinds of weird things like Mayo and Diaper rash ointment with mixed results. One thing that caught my eye and made perfect sense was Anti Seize with copper. Obviously copper conducts heat well, and the copper anti seize can handle temps well above normal operating temps for the GPU or CPU.
Since copper is conductive I had to be careful not to over do the application to prevent large amounts of squeeze out when I put the heat sink on. Once I had it assembled I fired the PC up installed the latest drivers and monitored the GPU temperature during idle. It sat around 30 C. I then did some 3D rendering and the GPU was between 80 and 100% load. The temps never went over 56 C. I let it run like that for 30 minutes and no change. So far I’m a week into it, We both play our games on it daily and still holding up well. I will update after a month.