silicon grease vs. arctic silver thermal compound

[DreadPirate]

For mounting output transistors onto heat sinks, can I use the heat sink compound typically used for processors? Directions on project I'm doing call for silicon grease...

[Nordic]

No, problem, just be carefull as artic silver can become a little conductive over time... Thermaly it would be much better than the cheap white grease.

I wish they would modify Cool laboratory's Liquid cool so one can use it with aluminium... it is a couple of times better than arctic silver... but it will eat away the aluminium while you watch.

[Conrad Hoffman]

I tested Arctic Silver a while back, and also talked to the people that formulated it. It's excellent stuff, and I didn't see a conductivity problem, but as mentioned above, you should still keep it off electrical connections. I wouldn't hesitate to use it with TO-220 type devices, but I wouldn't use it with a TO-3 style because the leads will get contaminated.

[tiltedhalo]

No no no do not use on high voltage devices, Arctic silvers web site does not go into detail about the conductivity of there product, but there products electrical conductivity is rated for low volts less then three, and even at that they tell you not to get it on any copper traces or component pins on the PCB.......
99.9% pure silver, zinc oxide, aluminum oxide, boron oxide, boron nitride in a suspension of polysynthetic oils, try this get some of the stuff and set your VOM for 1 to 10K range and look, now think about applying 60V across it zzzzzzzzzzap..........