Where can I buy heatsink solder?

I was thinking of using silver solder, or heck even normal solder.
But I'm pretty sure the kind they come with is special and made for heat transfer especially..

Does anyone know where I could find some?

Thanks.

 

No you don't get Solder for Heatsink.
Either you get Thermal Glue (Not Recommended difficult to remove) or Thermal Tape (Recommended)

 

Are you referring to thermal paste to go between the heatsink and CPU? Where do you live? You can buy it from pretty much any local computer store or online. You can get Arctic Silver 5 pretty much anywhere, look at newegg.com or amazon.com. IC Diamond (ICD7) is great though, and you can find it at amazon.com.

 

He might be talking about the solder they use join the heat pipe to the rest of the heatsink.

If that's what you want to do then any solder should do really provided it melts at a reasonably low temperature. I wouldn't use silver solder because you have to get it very hot for it to melt. Indalloy solders can melt at 150* which is pretty much what you want, they melt low enough to be used in an oven and shouldn't damage anything but they don't melt at a low enough temperature for it to have any chance of melting from computer heat.

 

LOL Yes guys, I have a 20g tube of as5, not what I'm looking for.

I am talking about contact between the heatpipe and the copper plate which is obviously meant to be MUCH stronger than 'thermal epoxy'. That stuff SUCKS.

Thanks funky monk.
Now, I take it you are mostly speculating?
Firstly, I think I have the opposite take on it than you do. I think the solder they do use is designed for particularly high heat, and cannot be melted with a soldering iron over any period of time...
Its not that the solder would melt from computer heat, its that its properties might change, it could crack or loosen the bond etc.

Secondly, I successfully re soldered a heatpipe to a copper plate recently. I had to get everything extremely hot. In fact I used a blowtorch with propane. I didn't use any new solder and there really wasn't much of a change in temps when I put it back together, at least, nothing more than what I'd expect from using a much thicker copper plate. But I think it would have been obvious from the temps if I seriously damaged the vacuum in the pipes.

When you get heatpipes hot enough, they expand. I can't remember if this makes them more or less efficient for heat transfer at a given temp of 60c, it might make them better for higher temps if you think about it.

Point is, there was no way I could have done it with a soldering iron, but it is possible to melt silver solder with an iron anyway.
Most solders are made out out lead and tin, which doesn't sound very good for thermal conductivity to me. The problem I was thinking with silver solder is that its much more rigid, and may crack under the stress of the heat.

And... when I resoldered the copper plate (with the old solder) it was SOLID. I don't think normal solder of any type would create that sort of bond, I could be wrong but I think there is some special type of adhesive mixed in.

Of course, advice and speculation are always welcome, but... does anyone know what the manufacturer uses?

 

I've been looking into soldering some stuff to my heatpipes for a while. Anyway, this sort of stuff is just basic hardware. It's not like electronics where you have to be carefull about conductivity etc. Basically, provided it's metal and it makes the join properly you can use pretty much anything.

Even lead has a thermal resistance of about 1/10 of most thermal pastes, and it should make perfect contact too. I'm basically saying that it really isn't worth the effort to use silver solder. I'd just use a low melting solder so I could simply bung it in the oven at 180 and leave it 20 minutes.

As for the soldering iron bit, even if you used leaded solder I'd be surprised if you managed to get it to melt, even if you have a 60W iron or something like that. Heatsinks are made to take heat away, you pretty much have to get the whole thing up to temp.

On the damaged heatpipe bit, if you make it expand then the whole thing might screw over. It would make the pressure drop below what it was designed for and so the coolant would boil at a lower temperature. Whether that's a good thing or not is pretty situational. Also there's the fact that sintered wicks probably don't like being bent around. I bent the heatpipe on my CPU by accident about a year ago and I don't think it's been the same since.

 

Sorry niffcreature, I was thinking you knew more about that stuff.

I'd imagine any solder would do. But with a heatpipe isn't there a gas or fluid in there that if the solder cracked it would escape and not keep its effectiveness any more?

 

The heat pipe is a sealed copper unit, the solder is only there because it's way of attaching it all together which has a low thermal resistance.

 

Now I look like the double dope!

 

Yeah, you can't desolder or solder a heatpipe with a soldering iron, the heat gets dissipated too fast by the heatpipe.
I disassembled my M15x heatsink with a hot-air gun, the temp I used was about 420°C, this means the solder which they used is probably lead-free (which is nowadays standard in the industry).

Lead-free solder is also the best in terms of thermal conductivity and soft-soldering. Anything else, like copper solder or a copper/silver alloy will need much higher temps, about 750°C and up. That's nothing you can do with a hot-air gun and it probably kills the heatpipes.

There's solder with Sn96.5/Ag3/Cu0.5, that's the soft-soldering alloy with the highest silver amount I've seen so far. Melting temp is about 220°C.
That's probably the best you can get and which you can handle at relatively low temps. I guess any lead free solder with a tin amount higher tan 90% will do just as well.

 

I would use a butane micro torch kit in this case. And use a Sharpie to outline where the heatpipe used to be attached to the plate just so your final setup of your heatsink is not out of shape.

Check out the two links:

Search Results for buthane torch

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/484678-heatsink-mod-how-do-i-separate-these-two-pieces.html

 

Yea, I dunno why I made this thread.

I already did it successfully once, I was just curious if anyone has heard of some solder that is meant to be partially an adhesive.

I have lead free solder. Does butane burn hotter than propane? Anyway the propane torch I used was bigger than that and I used direct flame.
Now I find it funny that you all are talking about a ~400 degree temp but some say celsius and some say farenheit
Personally I have no idea how hot I got the few heatsinks I desoldered. but 10 minutes? Took me about 2 LOL

I trust that commander wolf did it pretty well, and that moral hazard had some success at some point too.
Soon tho I'm going to try harder with this stuff, for the purpose of extreme cooling. I know I can do it. There will be more heatpipes in my notebook than in any other

I need a big can of flux tho and a new torch...

Anyway like I said, my propane blowtorch did NOT kill the heatpipes. It takes a LONG time to get them to expand like that, and I haven't tried to reassemble heatpipes that I did that with. But the heatsink I did reassemble without the pipes blowing up worked just fine afterwards...

I will update this thread with some pictures and some guidelines... because I still don't think its anything someone looking for a 'guide' should do.
Thanks for all the comments.

 

Well if you're into extreme cooling and you're looking for the best of the best then silver solder is what you want. A quick google search brought up indalloy 209. Melts at 230*C so you shouldn't have any problems.

If you want to take your temps down then you should look at either increasing the airflow through the heatsink or in some way making the exchange area larger. For each heat pipe you put on, you'll see diminishing returns.

I'm thinking about water cooling mine, although I don't know whether you can get clamps for tube smaller than 3/8 ID. They'd also need to be able to attatch to the copper pipe I'd use internally nicely. I'm very limited for space and I'd like the clamps coming out of the side for obvious reasons so this lower my options a vast amount.

 

You mean for each heatpipe I put on top of the original?
I thought about that.

I'd think a thicker piece of copper for the exchange area would spread the heat better, I could probably fit 1 equal sized heatpipe on either side.

 

By the exchange area, I meant where the heat passes to the air, the finned bit.

I'm not sure how to explain this in a legilible way but ultimately, the only way you're going to see big gains in thermal performance is to have a higher total thermal capacity running through your heatsink by either pushing more air through it or switching to something with a higher capacity like water. Water can hold about 4000 times as much heat as air for a given volume and temperature increase so it's the logical way to go if you're up for the challenge.