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Thermal pads

Cerulean

Cerulean

[H]F Junkie
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Jul 27, 2006
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Hey, I was wondering where I could find thermal pads.

Also, are there any reviews and benchmarks of different thermal pads? Are there different kinds? Thanks.



Random idea: have a thin copper square a couple or few mm thick with thermal paste on both sides instead of using thermal pads. Good or bad idea?
 
Adding more layers of anything between your heatsink and your heat source will only act as a thermal insulator, even if it's copper, silver or diamond.
 
There is a copper mod for laptops, particularly Dell M1330's. It's basically what you are describing and it seems people have had success with it. Check it out.
 
In my opinion a good idea. The specs on most (read all) thermal pads are horrible. If you can get the copper shims the proper thickness so that the thermal paste can be applied thinly I think you will be much better off . Think about applying thermal epoxy on the shim to heatsink side to keep it in place and make installation easier. Even brass would be good, thermal pads pretty much suck compared to metal even with the added 2 paste layers, If you think about it a thermal pad is usually a fabric matrix filled with thermal paste. OK thats a way oversimplification but it is still accurate

And finding the thermal pads is tough, the link I had bookmarked is gone. Be careful some products listed/advertised as "thermal pads" are one shot applications of thermal paste in a materail that will melt and flow. I am assuming you are looking for the sponge like pads commonly found between motherboard mosfets and there heatsink or video card memory chips and the heatsink. If that is the case you are looking for "Thermal Gap Pads".

the down side is the thickness of the metal shim would need to be pretty precise and due to board flex and other issues need to be evaluated/measured for each individual application.

Another option would be to epoxy the shims to the heatsink and use something like Bergquist "sil" pads which are thicker than paste layer but thinner than a gap pad and would allow some much smaller gap to be filled and account for minor variations from device to device (and a lot cheaper than gap pad).
 
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In the case of laptops where the heatsink surface is a fixed distance from the chip, and you need to use something to fill the gap (or potentially add extra pressure), then ya.. a square of copper would probably improve cooling compared to your typical thermal pads.
 
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