Conductive Elements

Manufacturers have made a small fortune off of confusion tactics and misinformation. Marketing departments often times neglect to refer back to solid science when making their bold claims, which is why we have assembled a complete list of thermally conductive elements in the reference chart below.

It's very well known that Silver, Copper, Gold, and Aluminum together comprise the top four most thermally conductive elements. However, without knowing the thermal conductance of these elements you might be fooled into thinking the performance was close. As it turns out, Silver and Copper both offer nearly twice the performance of Aluminum when transferring thermal energy such as heat. The reason Aluminum is used in so many applications is because it's the least expensive top-tier metal available. Most Thermal Interface Material and CPU coolers use several different elemental ingredients to work together, but after a careful inspection of the performance levels it comes as a surprise to me that some of the most popular products make use of such poor conductive elements.

Recipes usually call for only the finest ingredients, and the very same principle is true for overclocker and hardware enthusiast products. Thermal pastes are often times mixed from at least a dozen different components, while heatsink coolers may use only one or two different metals. Armed with the knowledge above, you might expect any silver-based product to be a clear-cut winner... but building a superior product by design is different than what you receive in execution. Production and material costs usually dictate how the product is designed and fabricated.

Keep these materials in mind as we take a look at the new products Benchmark Reviews has collected for this round-up article, beginning with our first contender...

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